The CEO of Laura Ingraham’s LifeZette Won’t Stop Talking About His Employees’ ‘Boobs and Butts’
‘Is it just me or are [her] tits getting bigger?’ the conservative site’s top exec said about a female colleague, according to one of seven sources who spoke with The Daily Beast.
LifeZette, the politics and culture website founded by prominent ally of President Donald Trump and longtime talk radio host Laura Ingraham, is in trouble.
Traffic to the site—billed as the right’s answer to the massive HuffPost when it was founded in 2015—is minuscule, with an average of little more than 10,000 unique visitors per day in July, according to data from ComScore. LifeZette is also the target of a labor complaint aimed at its payroll practices from a former employee who says paychecks came sporadically and with little official documentation, according to documents provided to The Daily Beast.
Most seriously, according to seven sources currently and formerly employed by LifeZette, the organization has become a deeply uncomfortable place for women to work, with a top company official repeatedly making sexually suggestive comments about female employees—sometimes within earshot of those female staffers.
Byron Martinez, LifeZette’s former broadcast engineer and IT administrator, recalled Peter Anthony, the site’s chief executive, “talking about other women’s boobs, butts… how he would desire sexual activities with [female colleagues] and stuff like that… All kinds of inappropriate talk about women in the office.”
Six other sources also singled out Anthony by name as the chief culprit. Anthony, a longtime friend and business partner of Ingraham’s, co-founded the D.C.-based site with her and oversees its day-to-day operations.
With the exception of Martinez, all sources spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal from Ingraham and Anthony.
Reports of Anthony’s conduct at Ingraham’s company come as the latter is in talks for her own primetime show at Fox News, which has itself recently paid millions of dollars to settle allegations that some of its most senior employees and talent sexually harassed female co-workers.
LifeZette sources say Anthony not only frequently made sexually inappropriate comments about female employees, but also aggressively and profanely pressured staffers into taking liquor shots at company happy hours.
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Ingraham did not respond to multiple inquiries for this story; Anthony confirmed that she was aware of them. A number of sources described her as hands-off in the day-to-day operation of the newsroom. But Martinez said he made her aware of his frequent payroll problems
“Her role is that she talks to Pete and Pete handles everything for her. So of course she’s well aware of it,” Martinez said. “I would cc Laura on the emails but she would never discuss any wages or finances with me or anything like that.”
But it is unclear if Ingraham, the LifeZette co-founder and top editor, knew anything about Anthony’s lewd comments. Sources working at the website all independently characterized Ingraham as too focused on her radio show, her book, and her next potential big career move to be aware of the myriad examples of a potential HR nightmare.
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Despite the problems besetting LifeZette, it is clear Ingraham is still determined to plug her website in high-profile media. When Ingraham is introduced on Fox News—where she hopes to make her future professional home—she is still introduced by hosts as the proud editor in chief of LifeZette.
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The CEO of Laura Ingraham’s LifeZette Won’t Stop Talking About His Employees’ ‘Boobs and Butts’ https://t.co/xBJG0V7Bhs
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 31, 2017
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