Staff Reports
Fox News Media recently announced it fired a senior executive at FOX Weather after an undercover video surfaced. The footage, released by James O’Keefe’s Citizen Journalism Foundation, shows Jason Hermes, vice president of content sales and partnerships, bragging about charging thousands to a corporate card and treating expense reports like a blank check. The video went viral, and the network moved quickly to cut him loose — while insisting the claims in the tape don’t match their internal controls.
Undercover video and the expense account scandal
The undercover video is the kind of thing that makes people laugh and cringe at the same time. Hermes was recorded saying you could walk into “a strip club” and run up a $4,000 charge on a Fox corporate card and the company would sign off. He even said they would lie on expense reports and no one would complain. Whether you think O’Keefe is a hero or a provoker, the tape shows a senior executive talking like corporate policy is optional. That’s not just a PR problem — it’s a trust problem.
What Fox says and what it means
Fox News Media promptly released a statement: Hermes has been terminated, and an audit found no evidence the behavior he described actually happened. Fine — audits matter. But firing someone for boasting about a culture of expense-account excess even as the company says the claims are false raises questions. If the internal controls are as “sophisticated” as the statement claims, why was an executive comfortable bragging about gaming them? Corporate culture doesn’t change because a PR team says it has changed.
Two wrongs don’t make a right — undercover tactics and accountability
We should be clear: undercover sting operations have their own problems. O’Keefe’s methods are provocative and sometimes deceptive. They bait people into saying stupid things. But bait or not, people in leadership positions must know that words matter. A top executive talking cavalierly about charging strip-club tabs to a company card is a bad look, even if it’s exaggerated. Conservatives should defend free speech, yet also expect adults in responsible jobs to act like adults.
At the end of the day, this episode is a reminder that media companies are not immune from the same lapses they gleefully hunt in others. Fox fired Hermes, and the network insists no fraud was found. Still, the damage is done: the video exposed an attitude that many Americans already suspect exists in big media. If Fox wants to rebuild trust, it should go beyond firing one man and show a real commitment to stronger oversight — and maybe a little humility about how its own leaders talk when they think the cameras aren’t rolling.
