A Fox News producer who is suing the network says she and host Maria Bartiromo were "scapegoated as sacrificial female lambs in its $1.6 billion defamation battle with Dominion Voting Systems, Law&Crime reported.
Abby Grossberg, who worked on Bartiromo's show on the Fox Business Network and then Tucker Carlson's nightly primetime show on Fox News Channel, alleges that the network’s toxic work environment persisted after the sexual harassment lawsuits that led to the ouster of ex-CEO Roger Ailes, and she witnessed antisemitic comments and jokes from Carlson’s managing editor and senior producer Alexander McCaskill.
“Ms. Grossberg’s deposition testimony, as manufactured by Fox News, put Ms. Grossberg and Ms. Bartiromo squarely on the frontline of the Dominion/Fox Lawsuit so they could be scapegoated as sacrificial female lambs,” the amended complaint states.
As CBS News points out, Grossberg "claimed that she did not receive a copy of her deposition transcript until early March, although she had requested it at least six times and then was given days to submit an errata sheet, which lists a witness's changes to his or her testimony. The truncated timeline denied 'her sufficient time to review the transcript as she was entitled to 30 days to review under' state rules."
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In her amended suit, Grossberg says the reason for the numerous changes were due to "impermissible coaching and coercion by Fox attorneys," adding that she "felt that I had to do everything possible to avoid becoming the 'star witness' for Dominion or else I would be seriously jeopardizing my career at Fox News and would be subjected to worse terms and conditions of employment than offered to make employees as I understood it."
Grossberg says the strategy to blame her and Bartiromo came from Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch himself.
“True to form, and as corroboration of Fox News’s plan to scapegoat Ms. Bartiromo and Ms. Grossberg, Rupert Murdoch testified at his deposition in the Dominion/Fox Lawsuit that Ms. Bartiromo, but not Fox, ‘endorsed‘ the false notion of a stolen election, throwing Ms. Bartiromo directly under the proverbial bus,” the complaint reads.
Grossberg claims Fox treated “certain blameworthy male colleagues” with “kids gloves."
“This blame-shifting would, in turn, transfer culpability for publishing the alleged defamatory statements about Dominion away from Fox Corporation given that these men were and/or had a direct line of communication with the higher ups at the Network and had to endorse the false coverage of Dominion for the false information to make it on air for the purposes of increasing and retaining viewership,” she alleges.
Read the full report over at Law&Crime.