Gretchen Carlson | Getty Fox settles with Gretchen Carlson over sexual harassment claims Company will pay $20 million to settle suit 
 
 21st Century Fox is settling a lawsuit brought by former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, the company confirmed Tuesday morning. Terms of the settlement were not public, but Vanity Fair reported that it is for $20 million. 
 
 "21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit," a statement from the company said. "During her tenure at Fox News, Gretchen exhibited the highest standards of journalism and professionalism. She developed a loyal audience and was a daily source of information for many Americans. We are proud that she was part of the Fox News team. We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect that she & all our colleagues deserve." 
 
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 "I am gratified that 21st Century Fox took decisive action after I filed my Complaint," Carlson said in a statement. "I'm ready to move on to the next chapter of my life in which I will redouble my efforts to empower women in the workplace. I want to thank all the brave women who came forward to tell their own stories and the many people across the country who embraced and supported me in their #StandWithGretchen. All women deserve a dignified and respectful workplace." 
 
 The former Fox News host sued former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes in July, alleging that he sexually harassed her and terminated her contract in retaliation. Ailes has denied the allegations, though after 21st Century Fox launched an investigation into the claims by Carlson and several other women, Ailes resigned from the company with a reported $40 million parachute. 
 
 Now Fox News is settling the suit on Ailes' behalf, even though the company was not named as a defendant in the case. It isn't clear whether Ailes will be paying a portion of it. 
 
 According to Vanity Fair, the settlement will come with a public apology to Carlson on behalf of Fox, which is also reportedly in talks with two other women for their own settlements. 
 
 Though a settlement was never off the table, Carlson and her team indicated early on that that wasn't their ultimate goal. 
 
 "We haven’t discussed a settlement with our client or anything because no one has raised it. This is about more than money. Gretchen is standing up for something really important to her, it’s something that’s been a hallmark of her career,” Carlson's lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith told POLITICO in July, noting Carlson's work with victims of domestic violence, on sexual harassment and women empowerment. "It’s important for her to stand up for women right now.” 
 
 Allan Ripp, a spokesman for Carlson and her legal team said they had no comment in response to the settlement report or to questions as to why Carlson would agree to settle. ||||| It has been exactly two months since Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, sued her old boss, Roger Ailes, for sexual harassment. The suit inaugurated a frenetic series of events, not only within Fox News’s subterranean newsroom—where staffers feared for their jobs and, in one case, even the network’s future—but also throughout the media, as other women came forward to share their own stories of harassment. It all resulted in Ailes’s dramatic, and nearly mind-boggling, ouster from the news network that he co-founded 20 years ago. (Ailes has repeatedly, and fervently, denied all allegations of sexual harassment.) 
 
 On Friday, Ailes biographer and New York writer Gabriel Sherman, who has broken key elements of the story, published a lengthy cover article detailing Ailes’s downfall. As I have reported, Ailes’s own apparent paranoia increased around the time that Sherman began reporting his unauthorized biography, which was published in early 2014. According to a person close to Ailes, he hung a wooden door, now dismantled, that obscured any view into his office suite; according to numerous people, he also recorded anyone who entered. Ailes kept guns in the office (a Glock and Smith & Wesson were discovered by 21st Century Fox after his ouster). Carlson and others, including former Fox News booker Laurie Luhn, also detailed Ailes’s alleged harassment, much of it outlined by Sherman in his coverage. 
 
 In the early days of the Ailes saga, many applauded how 21st Century Fox was handling the crisis. Rather than defending Ailes, C.E.O. James Murdoch and Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch heralded a new era at the media empire by investigating him. Their swift decision to launch an internal investigation into the allegations, handled by the top-flight law firm Paul, Weiss, signaled that the younger Murdochs were prepared to adopt a different tack than their laissez–faire father, Rupert Murdoch, who is famously loyal to his deputies and whose relationship with Ailes went back decades. In doing so, they seemed determined to leave the seamiest aspects of Fox News’s culture behind for good. 
 
 But there was always a tension between cleaning things up and preserving Fox News, which makes $1 billion in annual profit. The Murdochs appear intent on putting the Ailes saga behind them as they move into the last stretches of an election and an attempt to corral crucial anchors, such as Megyn Kelly, to re-sign with the network. Now the company has agreed, on behalf of Ailes, to settle Carlson’s suit for a stunning $20 million, according to three people familiar with the settlement. To reinforce their seriousness about creating a new culture in a post-Ailes world, the company offered Carlson a public apology as part of the settlement. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” the statement noted. (The company, according to two people familiar with the discussions, has also reached settlement agreements with two other women.) 
 
 Though Carlson’s case is against Ailes personally, Fox is essentially his insurer for any settlement, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, and discussions between Ailes’s legal team and 21st Century Fox’s legal team became very tense regarding how much Ailes might pay in a settlement. (At press time, it was unclear how much Ailes was personally on the hook for.) As part of the language at the end of the settlement, numerous people with knowledge of the deal told me, Carlson has agreed not to bring any further legal action against other executives at Fox News, or against the company itself. 
 
 The settlement punctuates an important chapter in the Ailes scandal. While the Paul, Weiss investigation interviewed more than 20 women, according to two sources familiar with the process, it never officially expanded to examine the broader culture of Fox News. The firm, according to numerous people familiar with the process, was apparently never ordered to scour the company’s hard drives for all evidence of sexual harassment or bawdy culture. In some ways, according to one person familiar with the process, the Paul, Weiss investigation simply got a revenue machine back on track. ||||| When Gretchen Carlson sued Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, claiming sexual harassment, many of her on-air colleagues discounted the accusations and defended Mr. Ailes. 
 
 Now Mr. Ailes has been forced out. And Ms. Carlson has reached a $20 million settlement with Fox News’s parent company and extracted a rare apology — “for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve.” 
 
 On Thursday night, the tide apparently started to turn for some of the colleagues who were initially skeptical of Ms. Carlson. Geraldo Rivera apologized in a Facebook post for casting doubt on her claims, saying he was “filled with regret.” And on Friday morning, Greta Van Susteren, who also defended Mr. Ailes after the lawsuit was filed, published a post on Facebook expressing her own regrets. 
 
 “I read Geraldo’s FB post in which he said he regretted not believing Gretchen Carlson’s claim of sexual harassment,” wrote Ms. Van Susteren, who left Fox News on Tuesday. “We all regret it.” 
 
 She also assigned blame to Mr. Ailes’s superiors at Fox News and its parent, 21st Century Fox, writing, “I regret that Roger Ailes was not supervised by those in a public corporation who had the duty to supervise him.” 
 
 Mr. Rivera, who said on Twitter at the time, “I stand with Roger Ailes,” and Ms. Van Susteren, who said Ms. Carlson’s claims didn’t “have any ring of truth to me,” have reversed their positions. But other well-known Fox personalities have not. 
 
 Shortly after Ms. Carlson filed her suit, Sean Hannity, the Fox prime-time host, dismissed the claims as “BS.” Other popular personalities also defended Mr. Ailes, including Neil Cavuto, Maria Bartiromo, Brit Hume and Kimberly Guilfoyle. 
 
 Here are some of the more prominent defenses of Mr. Ailes offered by Fox News on-air personalities after the lawsuit was filed in July. The New York Times has asked the network for any updated comments and will post them as they are provided.
– Gretchen Carlson will take $20 million off Fox News' hands, settling on Roger Ailes' behalf in response to Carlson's sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit, reports Vanity Fair. Included with the settlement is what the magazine calls an "unprecedented" public apology for Carlson, an apparent effort by Fox to show its commitment to cleaning up the unpalatable culture allegedly rampant under Ailes' reign. "21st Century Fox is pleased to announce that it has settled Gretchen Carlson's lawsuit," a Fox statement read, per Politico. "We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect that she & all our colleagues deserve." Vanity Fair notes that while Carlson's lawsuit was technically against Ailes, Fox serves as his insurer, and conversations between the Fox and Ailes camps about how much Ailes will have to pony up himself were said to be "tense" (there's no official word yet on what that figure will be). Sources tell Vanity Fair that two other women were also granted settlements, and that as part of Carlson's settlement, she's agreed not to take any more legal action against Fox or its execs. Carlson issued a statement saying she's "gratified" the company has taken "decisive action" regarding her suit. In related news: Ailes defender Greta Van Susteren abruptly left the network Tuesday, per Politico. No official word on why, though a source tells Politico it was for financial reasons. Meanwhile, Ailes' legal team has been threatening legal action against New York magazine and reporter Gabriel Sherman for what Deadline calls a "damning" article about Fox's sexual harassment issues.