A former high-level editor at The New York Post claimed in a discrimination lawsuit filed on Tuesday that she had endured “several years of sex-based harassment” during her more than two decades at the tabloid. She said its longtime editor in chief retaliated against her after she reported to company officers that he had sexually harassed her. (NYT)
Michelle Gotthelf alleged that Murdoch-lieutenant Col Allan, who once was the longtime editor in chief of The Post and who returned to the paper as an adviser in 2019, fostered an abusive workplace environment, harassed her personally over several years and propositioned her for sex. (CNN Business)
In 2015, her complaint claims, Allan told Gotthelf, “We should sleep together.” After informing two Post editors about Allan’s conduct, “Gotthelf’s responsibilities and authority were steadily eroded” and newspaper management “began to diminish Gotthelf’s role in retaliation for her complaints about Allan’s sexual harassment,” the suit claims. (WaPo)
Gotthelf recalled in the lawsuit how Allan allegedly “became even more abusive” after she rejected his come-on. “He refused to make eye contact” with Gotthelf, the suit claimed, “and often killed stories that she supported for no apparent reason.” In a “culmination of years of sex-based harassment and abuse,” Gotthelf said, Allan was later forced to resign in disgrace. (The Daily Beast)
In 2019, the publication re-hired Allan, who Gotthelf claimed resumed his abusive behavior towards her and forced her to take down a story about E. Jean’s Carroll’s rape allegations against Donald Trump, calling the claims “baseless shit.” She said she complained to HR and was told that if Allan “tells you to do something, you do it.” (Rolling Stone)