CBS Report on Moonves Shows Epic Failure of Corporate Governance; The New York Times, December 4, 2018

James B. Stewart, The New York Times; CBS Report on Moonves Shows Epic Failure of Corporate Governance

[Kip Currier: Another example of toxic organizational culture--at multiple levels--that's also a "teachable moment" case study on the need for ethical leadership.

It's also (another) call for action and responsibility by Board members in all kinds of organizations--for profit and non-profit:

If you see (or reasonably suspect) something illicit, illegal, or unethical is occurring within your organization, say something!

You have an ethical duty to act. Not to cover up, turn away your gaze, or enable.

Ask tough questions. Demand answers. Report concerns and observations to outside parties when you can't get answers or information from within.

Do your duty. Do the right thing.

Even if it's hard.]

"As a draft report prepared by CBS’s outside lawyers now makes clear, many of the company’s employees, including high-ranking executives and even members of its board, were aware of the former chief executive Leslie Moonves’s alleged sexual misconduct and subsequent efforts to conceal it.

Yet no one acted to stop him — and the repercussions for that failure are likely to reverberate at CBS for years.

“A culture where this behavior could have gone unchecked for so long with so much knowledge is really troubling,” said Charles M. Elson, an expert on corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “This is a disaster for CBS shareholders. There’s been no other #MeToo incident with this kind of negative impact” on a major American company...

Members of corporate boards, senior executives and even rank-and-file employees have a duty of loyalty — to the company, not its chief executive. They’re required by corporate law, company policy and in many cases their employment contracts to report misconduct to the board."

Donald Trump may be in deep trouble: The press is finally figuring out how to cover the “billionaire” bigot; BillMoyers.com via Salon, 6/5/16

Todd Gitlin, BillMoyers.com via Salon; Donald Trump may be in deep trouble: The press is finally figuring out how to cover the “billionaire” bigot:

"CBS president Leslie Moonves has deservedly come in for scorn with his grotesque, though accurate, proclamation that the Trump phenomenon “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Let that Moonves statement be engraved in stone in the lobby of every journalism school in America, adding a single word in a grosser font: BEWARE.

But Moonves in mid-gaffe was only spilling the obvious (as in Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe: when a politician tells the truth). Though journalists may chortle or blush at such eruptions of truth, they never stop to note the unseemliness of broadcast networks piling up profits while their stations are government-licensed at no cost. It would, I suppose, be indecorous to point out that the airwaves belong to the nation and that broadcast networks have obligations to public life...

Whatever the scale of the current cable TV rethink, Trump goes on trumpeting. He continues to rant his way through falsehoods — most recently spending 12 minutes at a rally denouncing the Indiana-born judge hearing the fraud lawsuit brought against his “Trump University” — a judge who, Trump said, “happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” In the spirit of informing the public of the character and prejudices of the candidates who come before them, it’s a good sign that many journalists took note of the ethnic insinuation. It’s a sign that they’ve stopped bending over backwards to avoid the obvious. It’s a sign that, at least for now, they’re walking away from the role of — in the late Village Voice journalist Jack Newfield’s memorable words — “stenographers with amnesia.”"