Fox News Channel fired Bob Beckel, the former co-host of “The Five” last month after he allegedly made a racist remark to an African-American employee. Attorneys for the employee note in a statement that “Mr. Beckel stormed out of his office when our client, a black IT employee, came to service his computer, telling our client that he was leaving his office because he is black.”
Beckel then tried to get the employee to drop the complaint while Lord “was present and permitted this to happen, which is completely outrageous as they were clearly trying to intimidate our client and sweep this under the rug,” the claim notes.
A Fox News spokesperson noted in a statement that one of the attorneys, Douglas H. Wigdor, knew that “Fox News made the decision to terminate Mr. Beckel after a prompt and thorough investigation.”
“His client raised the complaint to Kevin Lord, EVP Human Resources, on Tuesday evening (May 16) via email and within 7 minutes Mr. Lord responded and began the investigation,” the spokesperson noted. “Today (May 17), Fox News delivered that message to Mr. Beckel and facilitated an apology from Mr. Beckel to the employee minutes after he was terminated. No one tried to persuade Mr. Wigdor’s client to withdraw his complaint.”