And according to attorney Douglas Wigdor, it still has a way to go. Wigdor has brought a racial-discrimination complaint against Fox News on behalf of more than 10 employees, and he’s representing the African American information-technology employee who was reportedly subjected to an offensive outburst from Beckel. “Mr. Beckel stormed out of his office when our client, a Black IT employee came to service his computer, telling our client that he was leaving his office because he is Black,” said Wigdor, founding partner of Wigdor LLP, and partner Jeanne Christensen in a statement.
What happened next, says Wigdor, violates the best practices of personnel departments across the country. “The wrinkle here is that the head of HR permitted Beckel to go into a room and try to convince [my client] to withdraw the complaint, right in front of the HR guy,” says Wigdor in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. “That’s unheard of in corporate America.” In this meeting, says Wigdor, Beckel started out by apologizing for this offense, but then moved into another mode altogether. “He said his father* was an important person in the civil rights movement and had done a lot of things for black people and was trying to guilt him into withdrawing the complaint,” says Wigdor.
