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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) Ja
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 ru
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 ca
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