Former PA News Anchor Files Retaliation Complaint

Flora Posteraro

Flora Posteraro, the former WHTM ABC27 News anchor in Harrisburg PA whose dismissal has roiled the midstate's social media world, has now filed sex discrimination and retaliation complaints against her former employer.

Posteraro, a complaint to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission confirms, lost her job March 12 after refusing an involuntary transfer to a weekend anchor / reporting beat.

That information jibes with reports PennLive had received in interviews with other people familiar with Posteraro's situation this week.

But Posteraro alleged this week her reassignment took place only after, and in retaliation for, her participation in an August complaint to the station's human resources offices about the station's general manager, Robert Bee.

Bee arrived at WHTM, the Harrisburg, Lancaster, York market's ABC affiliate, in January 2017, shortly after the station was acquired by Nexstar Media Group, Inc., of Irving, Texas.

In that internal complaint, which is also referenced in Posteraro's case, Bee is accused of making several disparaging comments about women in the news department. They included:

• References to one female anchor as a "mean bitch."
• Telling a former news director that one of the station's female reporters looked like a "fat pig" on the air.
• Making unspecified racial and sexist comments about the station's morning anchors, and
• Describing women who did not follow his restrictive dress code as "street walkers."

Another triggering event, according to Posteraro's complaint, was an ongoing campaign by Bee to get female on-air talent to stop wearing sleeveless dresses because, "no one wants to look at flabby arms."

Aside from the work environment claims referenced above, the complaint notes male on-air staff at WHTM were treated differently in respect to wardrobe issues, and scheduling.


Posteraro alleges in her PHRC complaint that when she was offered a new, two-year contract on Jan. 31, 2018, it contained the same rate of pay but a demotion from her longstanding position as anchor of abc27's noon and 5 p.m. weekday newscasts.

Posteraro filed a second internal complaint with Nexstar on Feb. 5, in which she claimed her demotion "was retaliation for her objections to Bee's treatment of female employees."