Report: WLTZ anchor Mallory Hagan was targeted by Miss America execs in vulgar emails

Before landing a job as evening anchor at local NBC-affiliate WLTZ, Mallory Hagan was walking across the national stage as 2013’s Miss America.

A spokesperson for the organization who embarked on a 20,000 mile per month campaign to end child abuse, she spoke to military troops, dozens of news outlets and audiences of every age and type, according to the biography on her website.

Now a bombshell report from the Huffington Post, based on a trove of leaked emails, has catapulted Hagan back into the national spotlight as a victim of alleged slut-shaming, fat-shaming and targeted retaliation from executives at the Miss America Organization, including, most notably, Miss America CEO Sam Haskell.

In the report, author Yashar Ali revealed that executives at the organization appeared to denigrate former Miss America contestants, referring to them as “formers,” and, in one case, joking about calling them a vulgar sexual slur.

The report details a culture of disdain for former contestants, but focuses heavily on Haskell and other executives’ ire toward Hagan in particular.

In 2013 she was the subject of a very public fat-shaming campaign when pictures of her in a bikini surfaced online.

“Throughout her travels, Mallory was publicly criticized for weight-gain and, thus, began to openly share her personal struggle body image. Taking pride in being ‘real’ with her followers, Mallory began to speak about being #bodypostive, finding self-acceptance and changing society expectations,” Hagan’s online bio reads.

In the Huffington Post report, Ali writes that Hagan spent time at Haskell’s home and took a romantic interest in Brent Adams, one of Haskell’s employees. Haskell is alleged to have been upset about this because he wanted Adams to date his daughter, not Hagan, saying to Adams that he didn’t “need a piece of trash like Mallory,” Adams told the Huffington Post in a phone interview.

In later emails, the Huffington Post reports that Haskell and another executive discussed Hagan’s sex life, speculated about her sleeping with more than 25 men, and wondered whether they are the only people “not to have f***** Mallory.” Emails from early 2015 reportedly describe Haskell calling Hagan “huge and gross.”

As Hagan became outspoken about the organization on social media, Haskell is alleged to have sought to organize a way to get the “formers” to ostracize her, according to the report.

The report details how Haskell and the organization effectively forced Hagan to give up on a business of coaching upcoming contestants, after which she moved back to Alabama and became a reporter at WLTZ.

On her Twitter Friday morning, Hagan streamed a video response to the story

“The story that broke today is one that is extremely difficult to relive,” she said. “I’ve felt very strongly about these things over the last couple of years and just didn’t have any way to prove that they were happening. It just proves very validating.”

She assured viewers that the women who participate in Miss America and the volunteers who help run it “value smart, strong independent women, and aspire to see them succeed both professionally and scholastically. In no way would I ever want to see this program or this organization go away. My hope is that this story ... will bring light to the type of behavior that’s been in leadership of the Miss America organization, and will help us put in place people who embody the mission of Miss America.”

Hagan appeared on the Today Show Friday morning.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 9:06 AM with the headline "Report: WLTZ anchor Mallory Hagan was targeted by Miss America execs in vulgar emails."