New York Magazine‘s cover story on the women who took down former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes chronicles, in astonishing detail, the surveillance tactics Ailes used to facilitate his long history of inappropriate behavior toward women and to create a corporate environment where he was essentially untouchable.
Ailes, who resigned from the conservative-leaning U.S. TV network in July after being sued for sexual harassment by former anchor Gretchen Carlson, was known for monitoring Fox employees’ emails and phone conversations and even went as far as hiring private investigators. The story says he instructed Fox’s head of engineering to install CCTV cameras so he could keep an eye on Fox’s offices, studios, greenrooms, and entrances, and he used Fox’s corporate resources to retaliate against workers he deemed disloyal. One Fox contributor wrote a hit piece against targets selected by Ailes, and another was tasked with following a former producer after she sued host Bill O’Reilly for sexual harassment. There was even a 400-page opposition-research file on the writer of the NY Mag story, reporter Gabriel Sherman.
But the biggest bombshell of the piece is the way in which Ailes was ultimately ousted: Carlson reportedly used her iPhone to secretly record conversations in which he solicited her for sex, meaning Ailes was finally felled by getting a big taste of his own medicine.
EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
| . |
| Humbled on her home turf |
| In elections Sunday, Angela Merkel suffered a political loss at the hands of Germany's anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, which pushed Merkel's Christian Democrats to third place in the region where the chancellor has her parliamentary seat. The outcome is considered a backlash against Merkel's liberal policies toward refugees. |
| Financial Times |
THE AMERICAS
| Rewriting the record book |
| Serena Williams' 6-2, 6-1 victory in the third round of the U.S. Open was her 307th in a Grand Slam as a singles player, carrying her past Martina Navratilova for the most wins by a woman, and tying her with Roger Federer for the most by any player. |
| New York Times |
| . |
| "A wound that throbs long after it heals" |
| Actress Gabrielle Union, a rape survivor, wrote an op-ed in the L.A. Times about the rape allegations against director Nate Parker, whose new movie Birth of a Nation she stars in. "As important and ground-breaking as this film is," she writes, "I cannot take these allegations lightly." |
| L.A. Times |
| . |
| Silver lining |
| Following the FBI's release a transcript of an interview with Hillary Clinton about her private email server, Coins2Day's Jeff John Roberts argues that the never-ending saga will teach all political candidates going forward to take cyber security issues as seriously as they do their voting records and their campaign hairdos. |
| Coins2Day |
ASIA-PACIFIC
| My friend, the saint |
| As the Pope prepared to canonize Mother Teresa as a saint on Sunday, a longtime friend, artist Sunita Kumar, a Sikh in Kolkata, recalled working alongside the woman known for caring for the poorest of the world's poor. |
| NPR |
| . |
| A significant strut |
| Actress Sunny Leone will become the first Bollywood star to walk the runway at upcoming New York Fashion Week when she models for designer Archana Kochhar's show. On Twitter, Leone called it "a dream come true." |
| The Hindustan Times |
IN BRIEF
| The mysterious transformation of German tennis star Angelique Kerber |
| The New Yorker |
| Stylist Stacy London on *not* dressing your age |
| Refinery29 |
| 6 ways to consciously break down gender roles at work |
| Bustle |
| Meet the woman who's been Pearl Jam's sound engineer for 24 years |
| NPR |
| Top aide says Margaret Thatcher wouldn't have supported Brexit |
| Guardian |
PARTING WORDS
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| —Fashion designer Victoria Beckham, in a letter she wrote to her 18-year-old self |