CNN’s Tapper asks Sarah Palin if she experienced harassment at Fox

CNN host Jake Tapper asked former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Thursday whether she experienced harassment or intimidation at Fox News when she worked there as a contributor.

“I wouldn’t put up with anything that would be perceived as intimidating or harassing,” Palin told Tapper in the interview, held a day after Fox host Bill O’Reilly was forced out of the network. O’Reilly left under a cloud of controversy and allegations of sexual harassment.

Palin says corporate culture at Fox News “needs to change,” but women should “stand up and do something about it” https://t.co/r4zB8ySTpf

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 20, 2017

Palin said the corporate culture at Fox “obviously has to change.”

She said women should not have to put up with harassment at work, but she also urged women to confront it head-on, take a stand, and not wait years to name a perpetrator. 

“At the same time if a woman believes that she is being intimidated and harassed, she needs to stand up and do something about it, not stick around for a paycheck for years and years and years, and then after the fact complain about what she went through,” said Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008.

“As a strong woman, I say, you know, we should be — feel more empowered than that and we should, you know, take a stand and get out of the place or, you know, blow the whistle on whoever is the perpetrator doing the bad stuff so that the culture will change.”

Tapper later asked Palin why she left Fox News. Palin said Tapper should ask Fox, before going on to say that the network did not renew her contract. 

“You know, I’m not going to speak for them. My contract wasn’t renewed, that’s — that’s the line,” she said.

Tapper continued to push, saying, “it sounds like you experienced something.”

Palin responded:“I just — you know, it was time to part ways and, you know, get out there in, I guess, a more diverse arena to express views and to speak for the public, and that’s what I’ve been able to do now.”

While at Fox, Palin had a media studio built in Alaska, meaning she likely visited Fox’s Manhattan studios less often than others.

Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes left the network last summer after he also faced allegations of sexual harassment, including from former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson.