Why Was Bill O'Reilly Really Fired?

The host’s ouster serves as an object lesson about what happens when morality and money come to a head.

Here are some of the things Bill O’Reilly has done, allegedly, to the women he has worked with throughout his two decades at the Fox News Channel:

• approaching an African American woman whose desk was near his, referring to her as “hot chocolate,” and grunting like a “wild boar”
• offering multiple unwanted sexual advances and lewd comments to a woman producer on his show, phoning her “when it sounded as if he was masturbating” and describing “various sexual fantasies”
• suggesting that she “buy a vibrator,” “engage in phone sex or a threesome with him,” and listen to “the details of his alleged sexual encounters with a cabana masseuse, airline stewardesses, and Thai sex-show workers”
• threatening to make any woman who dared to complain about his behavior “pay so dearly that she’ll wish she’d never been born”

Here are some of the things that happened to O’Reilly in reaction to these allegations, some of which have long been public, over that time: ... not very much. The accusations may have been reported in the media, and progressives may have had some laughs at O’Reilly’s expense because of them (Google “Bill O’Reilly loofah”), but there O’Reilly remained, the star of the Fox News Channel, pugnacious and indestructible. And he stayed on his perch in large part because from there O’Reilly was able to make massive amounts of money—for himself, and for the company that had elevated him. From 2014 through 2016, according to one report, The O’Reilly Factor generated more than $446 million in advertising revenues.

But even Bill O’Reilly, it turns out, is subject to the forces of gravity. The host, it was announced Wednesday afternoon, is out at Fox. And this is ostensibly because of the recent revelation of yet more allegations of sexual harassment against him. As 21st Century Fox put it in a terse press release, “After a thorough and careful review of the allegations, the Company and Bill O’Reilly have agreed that Bill O’Reilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel.”

It’s notable that the company felt no need to elaborate on the “the allegations” in question; at this point, the conglomerate (and, ostensibly, the collective of crisis PR strategists who wrote this telling sentence on its behalf) seem to have figured, people understand roughly what those accusations have entailed. While Don Imus was fired for a racist comment, and Dan Rather was fired for an isolated journalistic indiscretion, and Brian Williams was suspended for exaggerating the truth … O’Reilly, the company’s statement on the matter suggests, was let go because of a pattern of behavior that is offensive not merely to the people who were its most direct targets, but to our broader ideals of decency, and respectfulness, and empathy.

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