A former TMZ employee filed a lawsuit against the celebrity gossip show’s parent companies Warner Bros. Entertainment and EHM Productions on Tuesday alleging gender discrimination and retaliation.
Bernadette Zilio, 27, worked at TMZ and TooFab, another entertainment site owned by Warner Bros. and EHM Productions, from 2015 to 2020 and said she was fired after she complained to HR about a culture of toxicity and sexism. TMZ founder Harvey Levin, TooFab Managing Editor Shyam Dodge, and TooFab Senior Producer Ross McDonagh are also named in the lawsuit.
In the complaint, which was filed Tuesday with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Zilio said she went to Warner Bros. HR representatives in April 2019 about issues of “sexism, belittlement, preferential treatment and lies running rampant on [her] team.” She told HR that she felt there was a division of how men and women were treated on her team, and that when she spoke up about McDonagh writing articles she considered sexist and offensive, such as one that compared Rihanna getting sick with bronchitis and the “attack on her lungs” to her being attacked by Chris Brown, her concerns about making light of domestic violence were dismissed.
Read the source article at BuzzFeed News
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