Dalton Delan | The Unspin Room: ABC’s #MeToo moment is a reckoning long overdue
It was evening in the early 1980s when the phone rang in my old apartment on Lexington Avenue. After traveling for days on assignment, I had just fallen asleep reading Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”
My girlfriend’s voice on the line was upset, afraid, unsure. She had just pushed her way out of the ladies’ room at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where she was staying after a hard day’s work at ABC News right around the corner. I asked her what was the matter. She wasn’t naive, but even she was shocked at the audacity: The network’s Washington bureau chief had followed her into the ladies’ room and tried to press his room key on her. I’d like to say this was an extraordinary event. It wasn’t.
The tone was set by an ABC News anchor. Back in the day, so prolific were his workplace conquests that the following apocryphal tale went the rounds. It isn’t as farfetched as it sounds. The story goes that one day after the show’s broadcast, it happened that only women were left in the newsroom at 7 West 66th St. At that point, someone asked the room: “Is there anyone here who hasn’t slept with the anchor?” There was a telling silence until one young woman, an intern, piped up and, in a tentative voice, said, “I haven’t.” A moment later, she thought to add, “It’s my first day.” It may have seemed funny then, but it was no joke.
Another ABC News exec was a repeat offender for many years, and one-upped the D.C. bureau chief by presenting himself insistently at the Mayflower hotel room of one of my colleagues late at night. I’d like to say she reported him, but he was her boss, and in those days women believed they had to tolerate this sort of thing or risk losing their job. This was typical. The exec’s proclivities were an open secret. Finally, one brave woman took her encounter with him to human resources. HR put out the word on the Q.T. for anyone who wanted to discuss their experiences to drop by. For two days, women beat down the door, and they finally showed him the same. His comeuppance was long overdue. Someone in HR must have missed the memo.
So when I heard last week of the alleged assaults and toxic work environment under a Good Morning America exec, I was hardly shocked. But I assumed the network was, years into “#MeToo,” a less tolerant workplace for this sort of thing. Then I read their initial response to the new allegations: “ABC News disputes the claims made against it and will address the matter in court.” I was surprised at how tone deaf this was. Hey, legal beagles, you’re a unit of The Walt Disney Company — as in Disney, as in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, not Lothario and Casanova. The allegations were first made in 2017. It seems the network missed its own news.
There were equal opportunity harassers from both genders. In my time at ABC News, the place was so out of control that a prime offender was a female exec famous for bedding — or attempting to — male correspondents. I remember one shoot I was on where I was handling the logistics. I got word that this particular exec was going to drop in on our taping the next day. The correspondent came to me in a panic, pleading with me not to book her on his floor and not to give her his room number. I could tell you how it all turned out, but then I’d have to …
They say in corporate America that the tone is set from the top. Across the nation, there has been a reckoning as women have come forward and spoken out. One would like to think there has been a sea change, and in some ways there has. But clearly there are holdouts, and Disney-ABC remains in need of remediation. There is no middle ground here. Power corrupts, and it is not up to women to risk their jobs. It is up to CEOs and boards to have zero tolerance.
It appears one president is stepping up. The new honcho of ABC News, Kim Godwin, who came over this summer from CBS News — which has had its own sexual harassment issues — is calling for an independent inquiry into how the allegations were handled. NBC and Fox also have miles to go before they sleep. Godwin has said she knows “we have a problem,” and won’t be “sweeping this under the rug.” Go with Godwin, ABC, and may the force be with you. Perhaps this first Black exec to head a broadcast news division will bring real change. Till then, ABC, Walt Disney is rolling in his grave.
Dalton Delan can be followed on Twitter @UnspinRoom. He has won Emmy, Peabody and duPont-Columbia awards for his work as a television producer.
