'60 Minutes’ Producer Jeff Fager Ousted At CBS After Sex Harassment Claims
60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager is out at CBS just two days after the network’s chief Les Moonves was given his walking papers.
Fager's departure comes in the wake of a fresh New Yorker story by Ronan Farrow which included a new claim of sexual misconduct alleged against him.
"Sarah Johansen, a producer who was an intern at CBS in the late aughts, said that he groped her at a work party," Farrow wrote in his Sept. 9 story.
TV titan, Fager, 63, who had been at the network for 36 years, “is leaving the company effective immediately,” read a statement from CBS News president David Rhodes on Wednesday.
"Bill Owens will manage the 60 Minutes team as Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews and I begin the search for a new executive producer of the program. 60 Minutes is the most significant news broadcast on television."
Rhodes added: "We are fortunate to have incredibly talented journalists in place whom we know will continue to deliver our defining investigative work. This action today is not directly related to the allegations surfaced in press reports, which continue to be investigated independently.
“However, he violated company policy and it is our commitment to uphold those policies at every level. Joe Ianniello is in full support of this decision and the transition to come."
In his own statement, Fager countered, “The company’s decision had nothing to do with the false allegations printed in The New Yorker. Instead, they terminated my contract early because I sent a text message to one of our own CBS reporters demanding that she be fair in covering the story. My language was hard and despite the fact that journalists receive harsh demands for fairness all the time, CBS did not like it. One such note should not result in termination after 36 years but it did.”
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Fager joined the network in 1982 working for WBZ, the CBS station in Boston.
In addition to 60 Minutes, he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather for a few years in the mid-1990s.
Fager was only the second executive producer of 60 Minutes, taking the baton from creator Don Hewitt in 2004.
On Monday, as RadarOnline.com reported, CBS announced they had parted ways with Moonves, 68, after 15 years at the network helm. He had been plagued by allegations of sexual harassment.
A total of 12 women claimed in articles published in The New Yorker that Moonves had abused his power by harassing or even attacking them.
In a July 27 The New Yorker story, Fager was accused of ignoring and enabling bad behavior by two high-ranking male producers at 60 Minutes. Anonymous former employees also accused Fager himself of misconduct in the article.
However, Fager vehemently denied the claims, saying, "It is wrong that our culture can be falsely defined by a few people with an ax to grind who are using an important movement as a weapon to get even, and not by the hundreds of women and men that have thrived, both personally and professionally, at 60 Minutes."
The MeToo movement has roiled network news and Hollywood, with NBC star Matt Lauer being ousted and also CBS This Morning star Charlie Rose.
Now Fager has left the network.
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