ABC News executive Barbara Fedida has been placed on administrative leave after a report by HuffPost detailed a number of insensitive comments, many of which were racist, she has made during her tenure, reports Variety.

The report — which chronicled the senior vice president of talent and business's prejudiced actions against her employees, including many Black employees — highlights when she said the network wasn’t asking Good Morning America host Robin Roberts to “pick cotton.”

Fedida was confused about why the journalist was requesting a pay increase during a contract renewal in 2018. She said that Roberts had gotten enough from the network, reports HuffPost.

Fedida’s history of insensitive comments has led to more than a dozen human resource complaints against her and has cost the network millions of dollars in settlements, with at least one due to alleged racism. An HR investigation into Fedida was completed in 2016 and resulted in the networking hiring an executive coach for her.

“To say that she’s an abusive figure is an understatement,” one former ABC News employee told HuffPost.

Many say Fedida, who started working at ABC News in 1989 and had a five-year stint at CBS before returning in 2011, has been given more power than her title entails because of her relationship with ABC News President James Goldston, whom she serves as an informal deputy, according to HuffPost.

“There were a lot of things James and Ben didn’t want to deal with, and Barbara was always willing to handle them,” a former ABC News staffer told HuffPost.

An HR complaint regarding the executive describes a situation in which she asked her employees during a company lunch who they believed would most likely be an active shooter amongst their colleagues after a series of mass shootings. Many staffers have also heard her refer to women employees as “c**ts.”

Another example of her racially motivated comments include when the news executive was talking about then ABC anchor Kendis Gibson, a Black man, and said the network “spends more on toilet paper than we ever would on him.”

According to the report, she has shown little interest in the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and often displays disdain toward efforts promoting diversity and inclusion although her duties include supporting such efforts.

In the summer of 2016, ABC correspondent Mara Schiavocampo led a group of Black journalists who were advocating for more diversity in the workplace when they were left out of the planning process for President Barack Obama’s town hall regarding race relations.

The group wrote a letter to Goldston asking for one Black producer to be present on every show and asking executives to interview at least one Black candidate for every job opening. Fedida referred to the letter as a “Black manifesto.” After leading the group, Schiavocampo became a target for many of Fedida’s comments and was prematurely taken off air in July 2017 even though her contract did not end until 2018.

In a meeting following the dissemination of the letter, Roberts noted that the network constantly overlooks Black candidates despite them being qualified.

NABJ has called for the network to conduct a “transparent, external investigation” into its allegations and to waive NDAs “for Black employees & other employees of color,” according to HuffPost.

“The external investigation by ABC News should be transparent, and all findings must be published and broadcast. This is appropriate because Fedida was no second-tier executive,” the group said in a statement.

#NABJ calls for @ABC News/@Disney to immediately launch a transparent, external investigation led by a diverse law firm to examine all of the allegations detailed in @yashar's report, while conducting a thorough review of ABC News Exec Barbara Fedida and the talent dept. pic.twitter.com/geJMBejx4h

— NABJ Headquarters (@NABJ) June 13, 2020

ABC News has released a statement saying it will be conducting an investigation into the allegations.

"There are deeply disturbing allegations in this story that we need to investigate, and we have placed Barbara Fedida on administrative leave while we conduct a thorough and complete investigation," ABC News management said. "These allegations do not represent the values and culture of ABC News, where we strive to make everyone feel respected in a thriving, diverse and inclusive workplace."

Fedida said the complaints are “heartbreaking and incredibly misleading.”

“Throughout my career, I have been a champion for increased diversity in network news. Building a news division where everyone can thrive has been my life’s mission,” she said in a statement through her lawyer. “I am proud of my decades of work of hiring, supporting and promoting talented journalists of color. And, unlike these heartbreaking and incredibly misleading claims about me, that track record is well-documented and undeniable.”

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