There used be a dirty little secret lurking inside some of the biggest media companies in the world: the secret of how powerful men in senior positions treated, demeaned and often abused their junior female subordinates within a blokey culture that actively protected this kind of behaviour at the highest levels.
Like many other dirty little secrets, insiders knew what was going on and had been going on for decades. But for obvious career-limiting reasons, they looked the other way and never blew the whistle.
Over the past six months, that whistle has blown the lid off the culture of offensive male abuse in media (especially television) companies.
Case study 1: Laurie Luhn and Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News …
“Laurie Luhn put on the black garter and stockings she said Ailes had instructed her to buy; he called it her uniform. Ailes sat on a couch. ‘Go over there. Dance for me,’ she recalled him saying. She hesitated. ‘Laurie, if you’re gonna be my girl, my eyes and ears, if you are going to be someone I can depend on in Washington, my spy, come on, dance for me,’ he said, according to her account. When she started dancing, Ailes got out a video camera. Luhn didn’t want to be filmed, she said, but Ailes was insistent: ‘I am gonna need you to do better than that.’
“When she had finished dancing, Ailes told her to get down on her knees in front of him, she said, and put his hands on her temples. As she recalled, he began speaking to her slowly and authoritatively, as if he were some kind of Svengali: ‘Tell me you will do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it. At any time, at any place when I call. No matter where I call you, no matter where you are. Do you understand? You will follow orders. If I tell you to put on your uniform, what are you gonna do, Laurie? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, LAURIE?’ Then, she recalled, his voice dropped to a whisper: ‘What are you, Laurie? Are you Roger’s whore? Are you Roger’s spy? Come over here.’ Ailes asked her to perform oral sex, she said.
“Later, Ailes showed her the footage of her dancing. She asked him what he intended to do with it and, she says, he replied, ‘I am going to put it in a safe-deposit box just so we understand each other’.” — New York magazine, July 16
Case study 2: Amber Harrison and Tim Worner, CEO of Seven West Media …
“Harrison claims there have been ‘hundreds of text messages’ between the two which laid out the pair’s ‘sexual proclivities and eagerness’ but were later destroyed at Seven’s direction. According to her, Worner said in the text messages: ‘I love being with you. Too much. Too sexy’, ‘I was just going to tell you that I had a massive hard on and I was thinking about ramming it in your mouth’, and ‘I want to fuck you like a wild man’.
“Harrison says the sexual relationship between the pair was often ‘heightened’ by cocaine, an allegation never denied by Seven or Worner. He texted Harrison one night: ‘I think my performance was drug assisted. And if you can go dirtier I am slightly scared. But you are so f hot so I will take the chance’.
“The drug-fuelled affair and corporate trips were topped off with a $10,000 ‘special bonus’ which Worner authorized to Harrison for ‘exceptional performance and outstanding contribution’ and the ‘hard work you put in and the considerable patience with which you do it’ …” — Financial Review, December 20
The companies behind these two stories are controlled by media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes, who themselves have each married much younger employees. Both these companies employee a large number of women (at Seven West it’s 52% of their 5041 employees).
When the story of Roger Ailes and his sexual predatory emerged earlier this year, it was James and Lachlan Murdoch, not their father, who stepped in to sack Ailes and begin a process of remaking the corporate culture at Fox News.
And when allegations of sexual harassment against then-editor of The Age Mark Forbes emerged earlier this month, Forbes himself resigned.
The worm has turned. The dirty little secret has been exposed. No longer will media CEOs, editors and senior executives get away with abusing their positions while running media companies that report and lecture other people in society who abuse their positions.
‘ No longer will media CEOs, editors and senior executives get away with abusing their positions …’
Eric, it’s a noble hope but where is the evidence the practice will not prevail? Just because a couple executives have been caught out does not mean low behaviour will not be tolerated.
View the famous Trump ‘pussy’ footage to realise that not only did this powerful male get away with it but he won the bonus prize of becoming president-elect. Sure, the footage was old but Trump was absolved in November 2016 by a majority of the USA’s men & women. And he learnt what from this…?
Gross behaviour rewarded – convince me times have changed in the past month….
To suggest men in media companies are somehow different, or media company employees behave differently is off the mark. My experience in the same ‘Sandstone’ University that Tim Worner attended, tells he me learned from the best. His behaviour at work over the last few decades is entirely consistent with the behaviour I observed when he attended UWA. Sometimes drunk, sometimes mildly funny, always self-assured, sexist, cocky and irreverent. It was a time when even so-called ‘well educated’ men joked about driving better when drunk, or competitively wolf whistled at women in the Uni Tav. Groping and abusing women at drinking ‘sessions’ was mainstream. Tim Worner’s behaviour was typical of many young men, often from private schools, who were very confident their school and family connections would see them directly into powerful jobs. Seems little has changed.
As a former private schoolboy, though of humbler and less narcissistic origins than most of my peers you have a great point there. I went to a non sandstone uni and lived in a coed college which certainly had its moments, but many of the women were quite assertive. I had the good fortune to become friends with a couple of very intelligent women who gave me a bit of a verbal clip over the ear in a matey sort of way. One is still my best mate and she is married to my next best mate. Without her occasionally obscenely expressed friendship and that of a couple of others, most of what has been good about my life would not have happened. There but for the grace I guess.
I think the important thing to keep in mind is the fact that this kind of ‘mindset’ isn’t exclusive to media corporations. The power and control element of the dynamic can be prevalent in every area of society including learning institutions. Let’s not forget that as we expose the manipulation of media moguls.
My mum’s best mate was a rather attractive woman when I met her. She would have been over forty. She was even more so in her youth and worked for the press baron grandfather of a well know casino operator of limited common sense. The old bastard sacked her because she did not respond to his advances. Mum was no great fan of such people. Murdoch of course would never sack someone for being a mongrel, they make him his millions.
Your mum sounds great!
I’m not quite clear why Worner is the assumed wrongdoer and Harrison the victim. By all accounts, it was a mutual affair. Unethical and unwise, from a personal point of view — yes, indeed. But an example of men abusing their positions? Don’t women willingly engage in affairs, too?