A former employee of the online tabloid TMZ has filed a complaint of discrimination and retaliation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing against her former employer, its founder Harvey Levin, and parent company Warner Bros. Bernadette Zilio, a former production assistant and on-air personality at TMZ and its sister site TooFab, alleged that she was subject to stricter standards than her male colleagues and that the company punished her when she spoke out. Her complaint reads, “Ms. Zilio, along with her female colleagues, was belittled and abused, held to different and more stringent standards, excluded from business and social interactions in which only male employees participated, denied advancement opportunities, and retaliated against when she resisted the sexist and misogynistic ways.” Zilio and her attorneys called her former workplace a “boys’ club,” “100% a bro fest” and a “[f]reaking frat house.”
