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Office Romance

February 6, 2022 By

The biggest story in the media this past week was Jeff Zucker’s resignation as CEO of CNN because of a romance with CNN’s Executive VP, Chief Market Officer and corporate communications director, Allison Gollust.

In a memo to the CNN staff, Zucker wrote “As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”

In a New York Times opinion column by Joanne Lipman and Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld titled “Jeff Zucker and the Reckoning Over Office Romances,” wrote:

The headlines about the resignation of CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, over his romantic relationship with a colleague are electrifying CNN’s defenders and antagonists alike and fueling endless speculation about possible corporate power plays behind the scenes. For those, like us, who have been writing for years about men, women and the workplace, this unfolding scandal also points out how difficult it is to regulate office romance and how unevenly corporate policies around consensual relationships are enforced.

Two paragraphs later they wrote:

What’s so baffling is, why not disclose it? Both are divorced, and the relationship is consensual. Had they been transparent, it’s possible that Mr. Zucker, CNN and its parent company could have dealt with this without precipitating a crisis. What’s more, if rumors were swirling internally that Mr. Zucker and Ms. Gollust were violating company policy, why didn’t the bosses at WarnerMedia investigate earlier? This is an unforced error by CNN, causing confusion and anger among some staff members.

Lipman and Sonnefeld also opine:

Whatever the boardroom drama, this is yet another chapter in the tortured history of companies’ bungled attempts at dealing with office romance. The rules are all over the place. Enforcement is inconsistent. This is an issue not just for chief executives. A 2021 survey for the Society for Human Resource Management found that more than a third of Americans have had or currently have a workplace relationship, and the majority of them did not disclose it to their superiors. Offices romances have turned into enduring partnerships for prominent figures, from Michelle and Barack Obama to Tina Brown and Harry Evans and, on a less happy note, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates.

In their column the NY Times writers do not address what I believe is a more critical issue than reporting an office romance. That issue is defining what a romance is. I think that, generally, “romance” is a euphemism for having sex. Same for the notion of “dating.” You can have a relationship with a coworker, but if you have sex, it’s a romance or you’re dating–often hinted at by using another euphemism for sex: “intimate.”

Why should having sex make so much difference in a relationship? Why is it that you don’t have to report to HR if you have an exceptionally close work-related relationship with someone, but do have to report it when you have sex? Of course, it’s not the physical act of having sex that makes a difference, it’s the perception of the fairness involved in the relationship that matters.

For 20 years the management of NBC and CNN were OK with the relationship between Zucker and Gollust. They must have believed Gollust got promoted because she was good at her job. However, the moment Gollust and Zucker had sex, Zucker had to go. Think about it: if top management wants its people to work closely together, to like each other, to be productive and innovative, it shouldn’t matter if people are having sex with each other. In fact, if having sex makes them happier and more productive and innovative, why wouldn’t management encourage it?

Management can’t encourage it because of perception, not because of reality. In fact, perception is reality. If a manager is a male and a direct report to him is a female, the manager has to be very cautious, especially in today’s #MeToo environment, that there is no hint of favoritism in the relationship. The critical issue is the perception of fairness. If the majority of employees and management feel that a woman got promoted because of merit, there is often no problem.

But fairness is like beauty, everyone has their own, highly subjective view of it. A person who has a strong self-image and realistic view of themselves and their team’s strengths and shortcomings might look at a high-performing woman’s promotion as fair, meritorious and what’s good for the organization. On the other hand, emotionally needy, unrealistically ambitious people who do not have strong underlying self-esteem might look at that woman’s promotion as unfair and not good for them.

Over the years I have learned at CBS, NBC, the University of Missouri School of Journalism and at AOL that most people in a department know who the best performers are. If they see a good performer getting a promotion or favorable treatment, people will approve–it’s fair. If a male manager promotes an underperforming, undeserving female, the knives of suspicion, resentment and unfairness come out en masse. Also, there will always be the needy, entitled ones who will never consciously admit someone might be more deserving than me, me, me.

On the other hand, male managers will often promote their guy friends–drinking buddies, golf pals, fraternity brothers–based on palship rather than meritocracy, and no one says a word. It’s business as usual. Competent, high-performing women have had to put up with such unfair situations for years.

More from the New York Times opinion piece:

…organizations need to realize that consensual relationships between peers exist and not reflexively demonize them. Employees sometimes don’t report an office romance because they’re afraid they’ll be penalized, even if that’s not the case. Or they cringe at the thought of announcing it to colleagues, when they may be required to disclose it only to a supervisor or human resources representative. Companies need equally specific anti-harassment policies, with definitions and consequences.

What’s more, the rules need to apply to everyone. This may seem like common sense, but in too many cases, companies look the other way for high performers or senior management. High-profile scandals garner the headlines, but less visible pairings are far more common. Office romances have existed ever since offices were invented. It’s about time offices figured out how to deal with them.

I would add to the above advice that organizations, especially fish-bowl media companies, not only need to have clear guidelines about office relationships but also need to define what romance is. In my view, an unacceptable office romance should be defined by fairness, not by having conensual sex.

Filed Under: CNN, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Issues You Won’t Hear on Cable News

September 2, 2008 By

A new low point in cable news occurred this week with the focus on Sarah Palin’s family issues. Even after Barack Obama correctly and firmly said that family matters should be kept out of political coverage, cable news bloviators, like the gossip junkies they are, couldn’t help themselves. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, as usual, was the worst offender.
But there was one issue that I never heard covered on cable news, network news, or even NPR, and that was a plank in the Democratic platform that was touted to “clarify” the public interest obligations for broadcasters. http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6590162.html .
Here’s the last sentence in a paragraph titled “A Connected America” in the platform. See if you think it clarifies anything:

We will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.

The entire issue of regulating broadcasting was relegated to one relatively short sentence in a long paragraph about how a Democratic administration would deal with the Internet. This positioning reflects the relative importance of broadcasting versus the Internet in the minds of the Democrats and of the American people.
American parents are probably more concerned about predators on the Internet than about their children seeing half a second of Janet Jackson’s uncovered breast. Would that the FCC felt the same way, but its prudishness was at least overturned by the courts.
One ambiguous phrase in the Democratic platform dealt with the proposed reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other liberals hoping to muzzle Rush Limbaugh and other conservative bloviators. The phrase “clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum” clarifies nothing and will leave a Democratic-majority FCC clueless if Obama is elected.
The FCC should not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, and clarifying broadcasters’ public interest obligations is a good idea in principle, but almost impossible to implement. Plus, any “clarification” will apply only to radio and television stations and not to terrestrial television networks and, more importantly, not to cable networks where unfairness and indecency are rampant and serving the public interest is a joke, except for a few cable networks such as CSpan.
CSspan became the star of convention coverage by allowing people to judge for themselves about the conventions and the speeches. Even PBS got tiring with its old, mostly ugly, and holier-than-thou pundits and historians boring us to death. Come on, guys, let the politicians bore us; don’t prolong it.

Filed Under: CNN

Politics As Sports

January 6, 2008 By

Television news is covering the presidential primaries like they were sporting events, and the coverage is not nearly as good as ESPN’s – the sets, graphics, and visuals aren’t as good, the reporters aren’t as good, and the analysts aren’t as good. It’s a sad comment on the current state of the media that sports gets much more intelligent coverage than politics does and that politics is covered as though it were a game.
The nadir of coverage was CNN’s the night of the Iowa caucuses. CNN seems to believe that if it repeats a lie often enough, viewers will believe it – the same belief that Fox News has. The CNN lie Wolf Blitzer kept repeating was that CNN had television’s best team of analysts and reporters. At least Fox News’ lies, “we report, you decide” or “fair and balanced,” are clever marketing slogans that not only attempt to position Fox News, but also to position the competition. CNN’s bogus claim was like the chest-thumping bragging of an insecure child trying to boost its confidence.
CNN’s clumsy, unattractive, malfunctioning graphics were supposed to wow viewers, but instead they were laughably amateurish, and the analysts were merely regurgitating results or spouting obvious platitudes – the only CNN analyst who provided any insight was, to my surprise, the conservative William Bennett, who graciously said he was proud of Iowa and the country for honoring diversity and giving Obama the win.
The best analysts I watched were Mark Shields and David Brooks on “The News Hour With Jim Lehrer,” who, unlike most other analysts, had a few intelligent, insightful things to say. However, even Shields and Brooks couldn’t stay away from the politics-as-sports model. I would love to hear some analysts talk or write about interpreting the language of the campaigns — what the words used by the candidates, pundits, and public really mean.
For example, what does “experience” mean, how should we ordinary citizens translate the word? When Hillary Clinton, Bill Richard, or people 60 or older (both Hillary and Bill are 60) use the word “experience,” what do they mean? If you substitute the word “seniority” for “experience,” you’ll understand. The two candidates have a union, time-in-grade mentality, like most older people do. They are saying, “I put in my time, so now it’s my turn; I deserve it because of the seniority system. Those are the rules – I’m entitled.” And they act petulant if they think the seniority system isn’t going to pay off for them.
“Change” is another word that the pundits should translate, but don’t. “Change,” when Obama says it, means to do something differently, to go another, a new direction. When Hillary Clinton uses the word “change,” it means to do something the way her husband did it in the 1990s. When she says, “I’m for change,” it means “I’m for doing it the way we did in the 1994” or merely “I’m for doing something. – anything that will get your vote – and I’ll change it if you don’t like it.”
The best explanation for why television analysts/pundits keep their jobs is also because of seniority, certainly not because of a free-market merit system. And like the older candidates, the analysts/pundits believe that change means covering elections like they were covered in the 1990s—like ESPN would cover sports—only not a tenth as well.

Filed Under: CNN

Soros Should Buy CNN

January 9, 2006 By

Jesse Kornbluth writes in a blog entry on the Huffington Post that George Soros should buy CNN. He writes it much better than I ever could, so I recommend that you read “Open Letter to George Soros: Buy CNN.”

Filed Under: CNN