By Florida Bill The Me-Too movement is not going away and a few days ago it roped in well-known TV anchor, Tom Brokaw, sometimes called the face of NBC.
Linda Vester, 52, who had worked as an anchor and a correspondent at the station during the 1990s, blistered Brokaw in an article in Vanity magazine for hitting on her and wanting an "affair." On one occasion, he appeared at her home uninvited and on another grabbed her by her throat and kissed her. He once even groped her in front of colleagues, she said.
His predatory conduct, said Vester, is part of the culture at NBC and she does not believe that despite a so-called internal overhaul, anything at the station has changed. Unless there is an outside investigation of what goes on inside the news halls where females are treated as objects by male bosses, the culture there will continue. She speaks out now, she says, hoping to be a catalyst for that change.
In the past few years, the Me-Too movement has swept through the country. TV big shots, entertainers, politicians and talking heads are going down like pins in a bowling alley. Brokaw's long time colleague at NBC, Matt Lauer, was fired last November after it was revealed that he had a special way of hitting on young women who he would invite for office conferences on the state of the TV news business and how they might advance their careers.
Lauer had a private office with a door lock controlled by a switch on his desk. After some small talk, women complained that he would lower his britches and surprise his guest with a full frontal of his ready to go package. Charlie Rose, 76, a popular PBS and CBS talk show host, has also been booted from the news business because of his sexual harassment of lady staffers and associates. His ploy was more circumspect then Lauer's. He has been accused of sexual improprieties by 27 women. In some cases, Rose would call for conferences with staffers and then, it was reported, would nonchalantly appear in the near raw, or in a bath robe, with suggestions that there was more important matters than upcoming interviews to be dealt with.
But television pundits and anchors and reporters are not the only ones snared by women who are demanding that the harassing conduct of powerful men in control of their careers be stopped and disciplined. In the entertainment business, multimillionaire Harvey Weinstein, a movie mogul and friend of the Obamas and other prominent persons, has been exposed as a boss whose zipper was always open when he was dealing with young women who sought a career in the movies. Ms. Vester said that she was appalled at the conduct of Brokaw who was some 30 years older than she was. She told her friends of Brokaw's groping her and she also made note of incidents with him in personal journals which she has maintained.
Two other women, neither of whom have been identified, have made similar complaints about Brokaw's conduct. One is a former production assistant at NBC and the other tells of Brokaw's lusting behavior back in the 1960s when they worked together at another station.
Brokaw, 78, who was the lead anchor at NBC for 22 years is widely known and respected for his poise and judgment. From time to time, he is called out by various stations to comment upon controversial political events . He has labeled Vester's accusations as completely untrue. "I was ambushed and perp walked across the pages of Variety and the Washington Post as an avatar of male misogyny," an angry Brokaw said in a statement.
Brokaw said he met with Ms. Vester on two occasions in the 1990s at her request, when she was seeking advice on career moves. There was never any groping or pawing....that is pure fantasy. Ms.Vester had a reputation at the station for not being truthful, he added. Reportedly, about 100 women in the news business have come together and signed a letter in support of the integrity of Tom Brokaw and described him as a person who has always been straight and honorable in his dealings with them. Some of the women, insiders have said, signed the letter because it was expected of them by NBC management.
Without naming names, Shannon Bream, a night talk show host at Fox News, has said that she has heard stories of Brokaw hitting on women in the news business. Megyn Kelly, popular host of an NBC show and a former Fox News reporter, has said that signing a letter in support of Brokaw or on behalf of anyone accused of sexual harassment can be "dicey." According to Kelly, a former practicing lawyer and litigator, "one never knows what they don't know about a person."
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