What is Andrea Tantaros' Net Worth and Salary?
Andrea Tantaros is an American political commentator and analyst who has a net worth of $3.5 million. Andrea Tantaros was a host on Fox News before suing a number of Fox News employees for sexual harassment in 2016.
Salary
At her peak during her time at Fox News, Andrea Tantaros' salary was $800,000 per year.
Early Life
Tantaros was born on December 30, 1978 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Her father is a Greek immigrant and her mother is of Italian descent. She attended Parkland High School and also worked at the Pied Piper Diner, which her family owned.
After high school, she attended Lehigh University where she studied French and journalism. After finishing her degree, she worked as an intern at CNN on their "Crossfire" program. During this time, she covered the Republican National Convention. She then enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris, France where she earned a master's degree before returning to Washington, D.C. in 2003.
Career
Tantaros began her career as a spokeswoman for Massachusetts Governor William Weld, then Congressman Pat Toomey, and former National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Thomas Reynolds. She moved from D.C. to New York City in 2005 and started Andrea Tantaros Media, which provided crisis management services and media strategy consulting to Fortune 500 companies and political campaigns.
In 2010, Tantaros joined the Fox News Channel as a political commentator. The next year, in 2011, she was named co-host of "The Five," a new show to the network. After only a few months of airing, the program was consistently being its competitor programming on MSNBC and CNN. By 2013, it was the second-most watched program in cable news.
In 2014, Tantaros was moved from "The Five" in order to begin co-hosting the show "Outnumbered." While on the show, she made some controversial remarks regarding the CIA's torture programs following the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee reports, which had detailed some of the tactics used by the American military and intelligence community at Guantanamo Bay. She accused the Obama administration of wanting to focus on the details torture program because they didn't "like this county" and wanted to make the United States "look bad."
(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Lawsuit and Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Fox
Tantaros alleges that her move from "The Five" to "Outnumbered" was a retaliation move by the network in response to complaint that Tantaros had made regarding her treatment by some of her male co-workers. In an August 2016 lawsuit, Tantaros alleged that she had approached Fox News executives in 2015 to alert them that she was experiencing sexual harassment from Roger Ailes, long-time Fox executive. She also claimed that Bill O'Reilly, Dean Cain, and Scott Brown had made inappropriate comments to her, and that Brown and Cain touched her without her consent. All three of the men have denied her allegations.
In response to her complaint that she had been taken off the air due to retaliation, Fox responded she was actually moved due to a contract dispute. Around this time, Tantaros released a book entitled "Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable," which she did not get network approval for, as required by her contract. In 2017, a judge ruled that those claims should be sent to arbitration given the presence of an arbitration clause in the contract. Tantaros was also sued by Michael Malice over the book, as Malice claimed he was the ghostwriter and had not been paid fully for his contribution, though he lost the suit.
In 2018, she amended part of her complaint to include further details in an attempt to further substantiate her claims regarding sexual harassment. She claimed that the network promoted a culture of harassment that included spying on employees. She stated that her computer had been infected with malware at one point and that the female employees were at times required to disrobe in an open room in order to try on new wardrobe samples for their on-air time. A judge dismissed this suit as well.
Tantaros, however, has refused to give up, though she has also struggled to retain legal representation in order to continue her fight against Fox News. In 2019, she sued the network again in order to block the enforcement of the arbitration clause in her 2014 contract on the basis that New York law bans the arbitration of sexual harassment claims. Tantaros has had a difficult time of retaining legal counsel for her continued suits however as many firms are wary of battling the popular news media giant, given its large supply of resources. As of 2021, she was able to find a new firm to represent her and has continually fought Fox News' motions to dismiss her case. She has also considered representing herself.
Outside of Tantaros' suits, Fox News also faced a number of scandals beginning in 2016 over alleged racial and gender discrimination that occurred in the workplace. In 2018, they reached a $10 million settlement with 18 former employees. They also faced sexual harassment suits from other female employees, such as Gretchen Carlson. Despite Tantaros' lack of success, Roger Ailes did leave the network, as did host Bill O'Reilly.
Personal Life
Tantaros was romantically connected to Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro during the summer of 2015. She was later reported to be dating a British rugby player. Generally, she keeps her personal life quite private.
In addition to English, Tantaros speaks French, Spanish, and Greek.
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