In her lawsuit against Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes, former Fox News Channel host Gretchen Carlson accuses her former Fox & Friends co-host, Steve Doocy, of “severe and pervasive” sexual harassment.
According to the suit, filed Wednesday morning in Bergen County, New Jersey, Carlson says in September 2009, she complained to her supervisor that Doocy had created a “hostile work environment” on FNC’s top-rated cable news morning show “by regularly treating (Carlson) in a sexist and condescending way, including putting his hand on her and pulling down her arm to shush her during a live telecast.”
Carlson says Doocy “engaged in a pattern of severe and pervasive sexual harassment of Carlson, including, but not limited to, mocking her during commercial breaks, shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air, belittling her contributions to the show, and generally attempting to put her in her place by refusing to accept and treat her as an intelligent and insightful female journalist rather than a blond female prop.”
The suit accuses Ailes of responding to those specific complaints by calling her a “man-hater” and urging her to “get along with the boys.” Carlson was moved off the morning show in 2013.