This. $32 million seems like insane amounts of money to pay for a single settlement, until you start to look at net worth and potential earnings. O’Reilly was worth around $80mil at the time, according to Forbes, and he was not only a successful TV personality, but an in-demand public speaker and a best-selling author as well. The potential for O’Reilly to have earned three or four times his net worth over the course of the remainder of his career was certainly there and feasible. If you had to pay someone $32mil now to stay in a job that would earn you $240mil or more over the next decade…wouldn’t that be a sound investment?
I’m not saying O’Reilly didn’t do something absolutely horrible to the victim in the case, just that his attorneys probably laid it out for him as a numbers thing…pay this now, save your career, earn it all back several times over in the next few years, but fight it, and no more fame and fortune when it gets out. The settlement likely would not have been nearly so high had O’Reilly’s personal earnings potential also not been so high.
I hope the settlement was paid out immediately into a trust, but I doubt it. If it was a structured settlement that O’Reilly had to pay into for however many years, the victim might have trouble collecting if O’Reilly goes under. If it was structured, hopefully she sold it for a lump sum and some financial firm somewhere takes the hit instead of her.
rowe33
1949
If I have 80M and someone wrongfully accuses me of some sex-related crimes then I’m spending what it takes to prove my innocence.
Not in today’s 24-hour media cycle you’re not, especially if your potential future earnings, which could be four or five times that amount, depend on your reputation in said media, which will be trashed forever when the allegations come out.
I mean, sure, if it’s something heinous you’re being accused of AND it’s already out there AND you’re innocent, then you spend your fortune to clear your name. In this case, it wasn’t widely publicized, the amount was a fraction of future earnings potential, and Bill O’Reilly is clearly anything but innocent.
rowe33
1951
Right, that’s what I meant. If he was actually innocent and cared about his reputation with his wife, family, etc, I think it’d be important to defend himself. Instead he pays 32M to try and hide whatever he did.
Oh, sorry, totally misread that. My bad. =(
Dang, if I’d known you could make $80 million being a bad-tempered white dude ranting on TV I’d have considered a different career path.
Scuzz
1954
Watch CNN in the evenings and tell me this isn’t their programming.
rowe33
1955
It helps that Trump actually IS a villain though.
Scuzz
1956
I totally agree. So you pay out $5 million to some lawyer and you win. Instead you pay out $32 million and basically admit guilt?
Scuzz
1957
It does make it easier, but harping on the same things day after day with the same panels has to eventually cost you viewers if the viewers have any brains of their own.
Isn’t that what Fox News does?
Oh, ok. Nevermind.
I mean in fairness the viewers we’re talking about are still watching TV news!
Scuzz
1960
You know, anyone who actually depends on or watches CNN or Fox for their “news” is an idiot anyway. Anyone who watches one of their talking heads shows is just looking for someone to agree with.
Lantz
1961
Oh holy shit, he paid it. I figured a network paid it for him.
Exactly. I get my news 140 characters at a time from a source that has access to every secret our country knows. What could ever go wrong? ;)
Tim_N
1963
WOW, I am going to play this.
Lock her up?
Nah. Execution.
SEBASTIAN GORKA: If this had happened in the 1950s, there would be people up on treason charges right now. The Rosenbergs, OK? This is equvalent to what the Rosenbergs did and those people got the chair. Think about it. Giving away nuclear capability to our enemies, that’s what we’re talking about.
Hope Gorka knows what he’s going to get when he’s convicted…Fox News should have their license pulled for broadcasting this shit. Hope Hannity loses even more ad revenue.
At first I thought ‘maybe not so hard’, because your link is broken (for me, anyway)
But it isn’t like we didn’t already know that, too.
Does make them look a bit silly to have just before that put up:
This week’s bombshell that a controversial anti-Trump dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign has Republicans asking to what extent the FBI – which received some of the findings and briefly agreed to pay the same researcher to gather intelligence on Trump and Russia – used the politically connected material.
Will the also-already-know Republican funding also be called a ‘bombshell’?
