The @RonanFarrow @NewYorker piece is cathartic. It speaks to the integrity of the people who decide what counts as news. Not just at CBS. 1/
What Ronan describes is a kind of moral corruption that exists at the highest levels of many newsrooms. I’ve seen it up close. 2/
There’s a unique awfulness to experiencing and witnessing workplace harassment as a journalist. You go into the field to get to the truth. You see your news managers tell the public that they’re dedicated to exposing abuse, holding power to account. 3/
So when you get harassed or watch it happen to your friends and those same managers silence you, make you pretend it didn’t happen, and enable the harassers it is disillusioning, stifling. Not just personally but professionally too. 4/
It causes you to call everything into question. Your work. The limits of your own courage. It impacts your news judgment. It changes the way you see the world. That impacts how you frame the news. 5/
I’m most interested in the bit at the end of the piece. The part about CBS News, 60 Minutes and Jeff Fager. It speaks to a moral corruption inside old media institutions. 6/
Too many news leaders have been hiding their own dirty laundry while reporting on everyone else’s. 7/
The accounts are devastating and the denials are just gross. Jeff Fager is actually quoted saying that one of the women has “an axe to grind.” Seriously? Imagine what he'd do with that if an interview subject said it on 60 Mins.8/
This is the killer quote from the story. “A lot of my memories of ‘60 Minutes’ are of other women coming into my office, closing the door, and just breaking down because of working as a woman at CBS..." 9/
Across the news industry many women are working in similar environments. Many news organizations are aggressively covering wrongdoing in other industries while keeping their own secret. 10/
Personally I don’t believe the established media institutions will change. They’ll get rid of the worst actors and make cosmetic adjustments. 11/
I think that we need to build new, independent news sources with leadership that is diverse from day one. It will create a different culture at work, and bring more people’s experiences into the news. 12/
Also, because this is already ridiculously long, I’ll make it longer by saying a thank you to @RonanFarrow and @NewYorker. They used access to the VVVIP rooms to expose wrongdoing at the pinnacle of power. That’s rare. END 13/
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