Fox news fires producer who accused network of coercion

Fox News Media has fired a producer who last week accused the network of discrimination and of coercing her into providing misleading testimony in a blockbuster defamation case, according to court documents filed Monday.

Lawyers for the producer, Abby Grossberg, who had worked for hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, said in the complaints that she was fired Friday in retaliation for a pair of lawsuits she had filed against the company several days earlier.

In those suits, Grossberg claimed that Fox News lawyers had coached her to deflect blame from executives and male hosts in her deposition for Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Dominion says Fox News’ coverage repeatedly aired false claims about the company’s election equipment in saying it contributed to widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

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Grossberg said in her suits, filed in New York and Delaware, that she and Bartiromo were being set up to take the fall for Fox News’ actions because of the company’s culture of misogyny and discrimination at Fox News. She claimed that she endured a toxic environment at Fox News and that male producers had harassed her.

As part of the legal filings Monday, Grossberg’s lawyers included her errata sheet, which witnesses use to correct mistakes in their depositions. Grossberg changed her answers to several questions from her deposition in the Dominion case. In one, about whether she trusted the producers at Fox News with whom she worked, she changed her answer from “yes” to “no.” The producers, she said in her revised comments, are “activists, not journalists and impose their political agendas on the programming.”

A Fox News spokesperson said in a statement that the company’s lawyers had advised Grossberg that “while she was free to file whatever legal claims she wished,” she was not allowed to disclose privileged information about the Dominion case. “We were clear that if she violated our instructions, Fox would take appropriate action including termination.”

The spokesperson added that the company would continue to “vigorously defend” itself against Grossberg’s claims, “which are riddled with false allegations against Fox and our employees.”

Grossberg’s firing was reported earlier by Variety.

Parisis Filippatos, a lawyer for Grossberg, said in a statement: “The frivolous litigation tactics by Fox News punctuate its blatant disregard for the law, which is further underscored by the company’s recent retaliatory firing of Ms. Grossberg.”

The Dominion defamation case is scheduled for trial in April. Fox News has denied any wrongdoing, and both parties have asked the judge to rule on the case in their favor before a trial, and are awaiting his decision.