After serving as co-President of Fox News for less than a year, Bill Shine has announced his resignation from the conservative news outlet as of Monday.
In an internal statement released by Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to employees, the company announced the resignation of Shine, but gave no explanation for his removal from the company.
MURDOCH statement to Fox News employees pic.twitter.com/5bEdcuyntQ
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 1, 2017
Fox did announce his replacement, Suzanne Scott, the highest-ranking woman in the company who had previously served as Executive Vice President of program. She will now serve as President of Programming alongside Jay Wallace, President of News.
The press release from Murdoch was particularly uniforming as in addition to giving no details leading to Shine’s resignation, it offered no other information besides praising the network and Shine as a person.
“Sadly, Bill Shine resigned today. I know Bill was respected and liked by everybody at Fox News. We will all miss him.”
After announcing Shine’s replacement, Murdoch simply stated:
“Fox News continues to break both viewing and revenue records, for which I thank you all. I am sure we can do even better.”
As the controversies against Fox continue to stack up, it is no doubt disconcerting to investors and company insiders to see major leadership begin to step down. Shine and Wallace were promoted to co-presidents in the wake of former President Roger Ailes’ ouster – they were meant to bring stability back to the floundering network. A year later, it appears that Fox’s reputation is far worse off now than it was then.
Though no explanation was given to Shine’s exit, it is likely in connection to being named in a lawsuit against former employee Bill O’Reilly. In the lawsuit, former Fox’s “The Five” host Julie Roginsky said that she was harassed by O’Reilly, but was later denied a career advancement from Shine, based solely on her cold feelings towards O’Reilly.
As insiders at the company have noted, Shine was intimately familiar with the harassment culture at Fox, but like many others, valued his own ambition over the violations of his coworkers.
For now, all we really know is that yet another lecherous insider at Fox News has bitten the dust. Where the network goes from now is anyone’s guess, but with a woman at the helm, may Fox be headed toward real change, or just more of the same?
