Earlier today Deadline reported that Amazon Studios chief Roy Price, who was technically on “leave of absence”, has now resigned from his position with the retailer’s entertainment unit.
Price has been responsible for Amazon Studios, its content and its strategy from its inception, but considering the cloud under which he’s been over the past months, the resignation was all but guaranteed to happen. After details of sexual harassment charges levied by Isa Hackett became public last week, news of his resignation was bound to come sooner or later. Things were worsened when actress Rose McGowan revealed that she’d told Price about Harvey Weinstein and that he’d done nothing about it.
Amazon’s relationship with The Weinstein Company is also under question. There are two shows currently in the pipeline that may be sacrificed after recent developments.
The matter of sexual harassment in the workplace has reared its ugly head once again, and it doesn’t preclude any particular industry from being the “playground of sexual predators”.
Over the past 25 years, the most high-profile was obviously the 1991 Clinton-Jones fiasco, and we all know what eventually happened with that. Then, in 1994 was the Rena Weeks case against attorney Martin Greenstein of law firm Baker & McKenzie, which resulted in punitive damages of $3.5 million being awarded to Weeks.
More recently, in 2016, Fox News was the setting for a case against its CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes, where former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson accused him of sexual harassment. Gretchen was awarded $20 million, and issued an apology from Fox, although the case was specifically against Ailes, not Fox.
The subject of sexual harassment is a sensitive one, and it is often extremely taxing on the victims to speak about it in public. But several brave women have come out against the practice and brought things to the forefront. Companies today are taking drastic measures against executives embroiled in harassment cases, but because no company can dismiss an employee without just cause, corporate houses tend to tread very carefully lest it cost them millions of dollars in legal repercussions.
There will always be sexual predators in the workplace and, although perpetrators are usually men, that’s not always the case. An article in FirstPost recently highlighted the rising number of sexual harassment cases against women, levied by men. Naturally, there are also several instances of so-called victims abusing the system, and that’s not something we can ignore, either.
This is not an issue that’s going to go away that easily. As long as men and women work together, this sort of thing isn’t going to stop happening. Unfortunate, but that’s how things stand.
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