Former Fox News Employees Are Calling to Be Released From NDAs

Fox News staffers want the the network to take a hint from NBC

Gretchen Carlson is among the former Fox staffers calling for the network to lift NDAs.
Gretchen Carlson is among the former Fox staffers calling for the network to lift NDAs.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Following NBC’s Friday announcement that it will release former employees from non-disclosure agreements that may prevent them from speaking out about sexual misconduct, former Fox staffers are asking the network to do the same.

According to Vanity Fair, at least six former Fox employees, including Gretchen Carlson, the first woman at Fox News to publicly file a lawsuit against former chief Roger Ailes, have come forward asking to be released from their NDAs.

“All women at Fox News and beyond forced to sign NDAs should be released from them immediately, giving them back the voices they deserve,” Carlson told Diana Falzone for Vanity Fair. “None of us asked to get into a workplace dispute. We simply had the courage to stand up and say something—but in the end it’s our voices no one can hear. Because of our NDAs, we can never say what is factually correct or incorrect about what happened to us at Fox.”

Carlson’s case was settled in 2016 and is now the subject of the forthcoming film Bombshell, which tells the story of the women who facilitated Ailes’ takedown at Fox. The executive’s two-decade rule over Fox News came to a swift end weeks after Carson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit in July 2016.

The push among former Fox staffers for the company to lift their NDAs follows criticism of NBC’s Friday announcement from Time’s Up CEO Tina Tchen, who called for the network to lift all NDAs, rather than require employees to make specific requests.

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