Форма входа
Читем онлайн ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин
Шрифт:
-
+
Интервал:
-
+
Закладка:
Сделать
in common with a drunken frat party than a professional newsroom.
Correspondent Mike Wallace was singled out for bottom slapping, lewd
comments and unsnapping co-workers' bras.
While today no one would hesitate to call such behavior sexual
harassment, Wallace's cheerful willingness to do it in public - even
in front of a stranger - made him seem like a good (albeit
unpleasant) old boy. But the charges against Hewitt make Clinton's
alleged behavior look like clumsy courtship. One woman described to
Hertsgaard how Hewitt slammed her against a wall, pinned her there
and forced his tongue down her throat. Hewitt vehemently denied the
story and all other allegations to Hertsgaard, while Wallace
admitted his own antics and promised they would never happen again.
Rolling Stone eventually published Hertsgaard's article in a
drastically reduced form, although Hertsgaard says Hewitt pulled all
the strings he could to get the story killed. In an interview from
his home in Takoma Park, Md., Hertsgaard spoke to Salon about the
allegations of sexual harassment at "60 Minutes" that never made it
into print - and about how the "men's club" within the media exposes
other sexually reckless men, but still protects its own.
Your story has some pretty explosive accusations against Don
Hewitt. How did you come to write the piece?
Sexual harassment was not the point of the investigation. I
literally witnessed sexual harassment on my first day of interviews
at "60 Minutes" and women began to tell me about it, so it gradually
found its way into the story. But that wasn't the point, it just was
so pervasive at the time that you couldn't miss it.
What did you witness when you were there?
The first day I was in the corridor talking with a female staffer
and I saw out of the corner of my eye Mr. Wallace coming down the
hall. He didn't know me yet because I hadn't interviewed him, so he
had no idea that it was a reporter standing there. I'm sure it
would have changed his mind. Anyway, just before he reached her she
pushed both her hands behind her bottom, like a little kid trying to
ward off a mama's spanking, and got up on her toes and leaned away.
But that didn't stop him. As he went by, he swatted her on the butt
with a rolled up magazine or newspaper or something like that.
That's no big deal, one could say, but I must say it did raise my
eyebrows. I said to her, "God, does that happen all the time?" and
she said, "Are you kidding? That is nothing." And that led to
people telling me how he'd also unsnap your bra strap or snap it for
you. So he had a reputation for that.
Then I also heard about this far-more-worrisome incident with Hewitt
and that one did get into the piece, although in a much censored
form, where he lunges at a woman in a deserted place, pins her
against the wall and sticks his tongue in her mouth. There were
other incidents women told me about Hewitt, and, of course, (former)
Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn was already on the record in
her book "We're Going to Make You a Star" accusing Hewitt of making
an aggressive pass at her and sabotaging her work when she refused
him.
Was the sexual harassment at "60 Minutes" pervasive?
It sure seemed that way. There's a woman quoted in my story saying
that Mike would constantly have his hands on your thigh, or
whatnot. One producer said that basically Mike Wallace and Don
Hewitt felt this was their right. And that's how a lot of men in
television felt for many years. Women were basically hired for
their looks. You had to be competent too, but you damn well better
look good.
I understand that you had a difficult time getting the story
published in Rolling Stone.
The entire piece almost never ran because Don Hewitt tried to kill
it and (Rolling Stone editor and publisher) Jann Wenner almost went
along with him. They did emasculate the piece by taking out a lot
of the damaging material. You'll see in there that there is one
basic episode involving Don. There were four that I had reported.
[...]
So what did you think when you saw Hewitt taking a stand for
Kathleen Willey?
It was odd to me, seeing Don quoted in the New York Times on Friday
and Saturday as he was hyping Sunday's broadcast. He's talking
about what happened and I just thought of that old Dylan song:
"You've got a lot of nerve."
I hoped somebody would call him on it. In today's Times, Patricia
Ireland, head of NOW, is quoted as saying if these charges by Ms.
Willey are true, it has crossed a very important line from sexual
harassment to sexual assault. And if that's the case, we have to be
very serious about it. Well, the situation where Hewitt stuck his
tongue down that women's throat - that's assault. That is assault.
She certainly felt like she was assaulted. She freed herself by
kicking him in the balls - which they also cut out. She runs away
and then the next day, there was a fancy gala event where you have
to come in evening dress and she's there and Hewitt, this son of a
gun - he's like a randy old goat - he just could not take no for an
answer. She was wearing a backless gown and suddenly she feels
someone running his fingers up and down her bare back. She turns
around, obviously jumpy from what had happened the day before, and
sees the object of her horror - Hewitt - saying, "Don't be scared, I
just think you're a very attractive girl." They cut that out of the
article too.
There's a lot of huffing and puffing within the media about
Clinton's alleged behavior, with a lot of journalists complaining
about the public's so-called apathy on the subject. But in the case
of men like Hewitt, it seems pretty hypocritical.
It's absolutely unmistakable - and Hewitt is an extremely good
example - how most of the discourse about this issue involves people
who have no more moral standing than this ball-point pen in my
hand. And that goes not just for Hewitt, but for many of these
clowns both in the media here in Washington and in the Congress.
Anybody who has spent any time around Capitol Hill knows that a
large number of congressmen, both in the House and in the Senate,
fool around with either their young staffers or the young female
staffers of their colleagues. To any reporter who had their eyes
open, this is not news.
Carol Lloyd, A Feel For a Good Story, Mothers Who Think, 17Mar98.
With respect to Carol Lloyd's statement above, I wonder if I could have your answers
to just four questions:
(1) Is 60 Minutes infected with a slackness of integrity? What Carol Lloyd appears to be
describing in the upper echelons of the 60 Minutes administration - I am thinking
particularly of executive producer Don Hewitt and co-editor Mike Wallace - is a
deep-rooted slackness of integrity: the 60 Minutes environment has "more in common
with a drunken frat party than a professional newsroom," the top 60 Minutes staff are
"people who have no more moral standing than this ball-point pen in my hand," and
executive producer Don Hewitt comports himself "like a randy old goat." Might it be
the case, then, that the cause of your failing to satisfy minimal journalistic
standards in your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, and of your
failing also in the years since that broadcast to retract any of its many errors, is
that you yourself became infected by the same slackness of integrity that had already
gripped other of the 60 Minutes leadership?
(2) Does female hiring demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice program quality? If the
top 60 Minutes staff require their female employees to be physically attractive and
sexually accessible, then might the resulting inability of 60 Minutes to retain women
of high professional quality have resulted in a degradation in the average competence
of female employees? One may speak of demanding competence together with beauty, but
what woman of high competence would have hesitated to find alternative employment
upon discovering the harassment and assault and career strangulation that threatened
to be her lot if she remained at 60 Minutes? And so, in turn, might this readiness
to lose the brightest women not be symptomatic of a readiness of the 60 Minutes
administration to place extraneous goals - in this case, personal sexual
gratification - above program quality? And might this same policy of demoting
program quality to less than top priority have ultimately resulted in a severe
degradation of the quality of some 60 Minutes broadcasts, as for example your story
The Ugly Face of Freedom?
(3) Does male hiring demonstrate any similar willingness to sacrifice program quality?
One cannot help contemplating that if 60 Minutes is willing to promote goals other
than program quality in its hiring of female employees, that it might be willing to
promote goals other than program quality in its hiring of male employees as well.
Might it be the case, for example, that male employees are sometimes hired not for
competence, but for adherence to a 60 Minutes ideology? Or might it be the case that
men of high professional quality left 60 Minutes, or refused to join 60 Minutes, upon
witnessing the ideological claptrap that they might be asked to read over the air in
violation of journalistic ethics and in violation of rules of evidence? This too
could help explain the low quality of The Ugly Face of Freedom.
(4) Do some 60 Minutes employees feel that malfeasance is their right? Referring to the
harassment and assaulting of female employees, reporter Mark Hertsgaard is quoted as
saying that "One producer said that basically Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt felt this
was their right." This observation leads me to wonder whether there is not on the
part of certain 60 Minutes staff some similar attitude to the effect that
broadcasting their prejudices against Ukraine as facts is their right, and that
enjoying freedom from accountability concerning what they have broadcast about
Ukraine is also their right?
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl,
Mike Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 965 hits since 21Apr99
Morley Safer Letter 7 21Apr99 Does drinking wine promote longevity?
At bottom, then, I see little difference between your French Paradox story of 5Nov95 and
your Ugly Face of Freedom story of 23Oct94 - in each case, you ventured beyond your
depth, giving superficial judgments on topics that you were unqualified to speak on,
discussing questions that your education had given you no grounding in, and causing
damage because your conclusions proved to be false.
April 21, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
I find your photograph. Recently, I was searching the internet looking for a photograph
of you that I could use on the Ukrainian Archive (UKAR), and I did manage to find an
attractive one, and I did put it on UKAR, as you can see at:
http://www.ukar.org/safer.shtml
I attach to it a caption. Underneath this photograph I selected from the many
ill-considered things that you said in your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face
of Freedom, your statement "Western Ukraine also has a long, dark history of blaming its
poverty, its troubles, on others." A moment's reflection upon this statement must
convince any objective observer that it is unlikely to be the case that some historian
that you consulted had recommended to you the conclusion that Western Ukrainians were
more predisposed than other people to blaming their troubles on others. Rather, a
moment's reflection must convince any objective observer that it is likely that this
statement came off the top of your head without the least evidence to support it, and
that you then had the temerity to pass it along to tens of millions of viewers as if it
were a fact. In making this statement, and in making the scores of other erroneous or
unsupported statements that you also made on that broadcast, you were inflicting harm
upon Ukraine, you were lowering the credibility of 60 Minutes, and you were undermining
your standing as a journalist of competence and integrity.
What you are most famous for. The reason that I am writing to you today, however,
concerns The Ugly Face of Freedom only indirectly. What concerns me today is a
surprising discovery that I made while searching for your name on the Internet. The
discovery is that your name seems to be most closely connected to the conclusion that
drinking three to five glasses of wine per day increases longevity, which conclusion you
proposed on a 60 Minutes story broadcast on 5Nov95, apparently under the title The
French Paradox. It seems that you have become famous for this story, and that it may
constitute the pinnacle of your career.
For example, a representative Internet article that is found upon an InfoSeek search for
"Morley Safer, 60 Minutes" is written by Kim Marcus and appears on the Home Wine
Spectator web site. The article's headline announces that 60 Minutes Examines Stronger
Evidence Linking Wine and Good Health, with the comparative "stronger" signifying that
the evidence presented in the 5Nov95 broadcast was better than the evidence presented in
a similar 60 Minutes broadcast four years earlier. This Home Wine Spectator article
viewed your broadcast as demonstrating the existence of a causal connection between
(what some might judge a high volume of) wine consumption and longevity, underlined your
own high credibility and the high authority of your sources, pointed out the vast
audience to which your conclusions had been beamed, and suggested that wine consumption
shot up as a result of at least the first French Paradox broadcast:
На этой странице вы можете бесплатно читать книгу ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин бесплатно.
Похожие на ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин книги
- Архипелаг ГУЛАГ. Книга 1 - Александр Солженицын - Русская классическая проза
- Оркестр меньшинств - Чигози Обиома - Русская классическая проза
- Вы, доктор - Лев Гунин - Русская классическая проза
- Княжна Тата - Болеслав Маркевич - Русская классическая проза
- Дао жизни: Мастер-класс от убежденного индивидуалиста - Ирина Мицуовна Хакамада - Русская классическая проза
- Яблоки из сада Шлицбутера - Дина Ильинична Рубина - Русская классическая проза
- Камни поют - Александра Шалашова - Альтернативная история / Русская классическая проза
- Детство - Максим Горький - Русская классическая проза
- Антоновские яблоки - Иван Бунин - Русская классическая проза
- О современном состоянии русского символизма - Александр Блок - Русская классическая проза