The New York Times exposé of Bill O’Reilly’s settlements and departure

The New York Times exposé of Bill O’Reilly’s settlements and departure revealed a trail of private agreements behind allegations against one of the country’s most powerful television hosts. Reported over eight months by Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt, the story made the settlements themselves evidence of a system that could mute complaints while leaving the underlying allegations out of public view. Its publication was followed by advertiser withdrawals, new complaints at Fox News, and O’Reilly’s firing.

Reporting the Settlements

In April after the 2016 election, The New York Times reported that O’Reilly and Fox News had paid settlements to at least five women who accused him of verbal abuse, lewd remarks, and unwanted advances. The total then appeared to be $13 million. The sums and the secrecy around them stood in sharp contrast to O’Reilly’s public role as a prominent critic of feminism.

Only one woman, Wendy Walsh, spoke on the record in the article. A former guest on O’Reilly’s program, Walsh said she lost a lucrative offer to become a contributor after declining an invitation to return to his hotel suite. Most of the other women were bound by settlements that exchanged substantial payments for promises not to discuss what had happened.

What the Agreements Concealed

Steel’s reporting examined the terms of the deals, which reached well beyond a promise of silence. Women had to surrender evidence, including recordings, diaries, emails, and backup files. They could be barred from assisting other women with similar claims, and a subpoena could trigger a requirement to notify O’Reilly and his team so they could try to prevent testimony. One agreement provided for a woman’s lawyer to give O’Reilly legal advice on sexual-harassment matters. Another prohibited disparaging statements about O’Reilly or Fox News and required the woman not to respond to journalists.

The financial terms underscored the pressure and stakes of those provisions. One woman received about $9 million and another $3.25 million; either could lose her payment for violating the agreement. The reporting later situated such deals within a broader set of constraints on claimants: federal protections did not cover every worker, filing deadlines could be short, and damages were capped. For women who needed money, privacy, or a way to move on, settlement could seem more attainable than a lawsuit, even when its terms restricted future speech.

Exposure and Firing

Within days of publication, advertisers including Mercedes-Benz and Allstate withdrew from O’Reilly’s show. Other women at Fox began lodging complaints about his behavior. On April 19, fewer than three weeks after the article appeared, Fox fired O’Reilly. Roger Ailes, the network’s architect and a Republican power broker, had also lost his position.

The reporting’s account of the firings emphasized the difference between prior knowledge and public consequence. Fox had known about many allegations, yet the men lost their jobs after the claims were exposed. The article did not establish that the allegations themselves were new to the institution; it showed how public disclosure changed the consequences of what had already been known.

A Reporting Model

Steel and Schmidt’s work demonstrated that a settlement need not make a story unknowable. Agreements required lawyers, negotiations, and payments; those transactions left a legal and financial trail visible to people beyond the signatories, including colleagues, agents, relatives, and friends. Rather than treating settlements as an obstacle to reporting, the journalists followed them as evidence of the allegations and of efforts to contain them.

The exposé therefore became a practical model for the Times’ wider investigation of workplace harassment. Its editors saw a moment when women might be more willing to speak, and the paper organized reporters to examine industries including technology, academia, and low-wage work. The central insight carried forward was that an apparent absence of public testimony did not mean an absence of claims: agreements could silence individuals while leaving patterns discoverable through the arrangements made to keep them quiet.