With those settlements, Mr. O’Reilly was not only able to hold onto his top-rated, prime-time television show, an engine for his book and speaking empire, but he was also able, in February, to land a new $100 million contract from Fox News, the network that made him a star.
Two months later, Fox News and its parent, 21st Century Fox, forced Mr. O’Reilly out.
What changed? The allegations against Mr. O’Reilly, once conveniently swept aside, had suddenly become a problem. They had become a problem because they had become public (through the same Times reporters who first wrote about the $32 million payout, Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt).
In a similar turn of events, earlier this month, Mr. Weinstein did not last a week at his company after The Times and then The New Yorker detailed sexual harassment and abuse claims against him going back decades.
Now, a national reckoning is underway. Allegations of harassment and abuse have prompted action at Amazon Studios, where a female producer’s accusation forced the resignation of its chief, Roy Price; at the APA talent agency, where allegations from at least three men against the agent Tyler Grasham led to his firing; at Vox Media, which dismissed its editorial director, Lockhart Steele, after a woman accused him of misconduct on Medium without naming him; and at Nickelodeonat , which severed ties with “The Loud House” creator Chris Savino after several woman leveled accusations.
But it is a reckoning long delayed. And a big reason for the delay has to do with the out-of-court settlements and the nondisclosure agreements that go with them.
It was a nondisclosure agreement that turned off the spigot of accusations against the comedian and actor Bill Cosby, who was forced to grapple with women’s complaints when a former Temple University athletic department employee, Andrea Constand, accused him of drugging and sexually assaulting her in 2005. After some dozen others made similar charges in support of her case, Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand reached a confidential settlement.
And it was a nondisclosure agreement that brought to a close the flurry of media attention that followed the lawsuit filed against Mr. O’Reilly by the former Fox News producer Andrea Mackris in 2004. Her silence — along with agreeing to the public statement that there had been “no wrongdoing whatsoever” — went for about $9 million.
Those are only the best known examples. The entertainment news and gossip archives are filled with reports of celebrity sexual harassment cases written in disappearing ink.
Take the summer of 2010. Two women filed lawsuits accusing the actor Casey Affleck of harassment during the filming of “I’m Still Here.” Around the same time, the actress Kristina Hagan charged that the television star David Boreanaz had harassed when she was an extra on his Fox show “Bones.” Her high-profile lawyer, Gloria Allred, went before a cluster of cameras to declare that Ms. Hagan was “looking forward to her day in court.”
