Let me be clear from the out­set that this week’s “atyp­i­cal per­spec­tive” is slight­ly dis­tort­ed by per­son­al bias. Hav­ing worked for the best of CBS News boss­es, I sug­gest cur­rent con­trol­ling share­hold­er Shari Red­stone read some broad­cast his­to­ry, watch a movie and con­sid­er her rela­tion­ship to the “glass ceiling”.

Doing so might help her reassess her efforts to inter­fere with the edi­to­r­i­al inde­pen­dence of  60 Min­utes instead of dig­ging in her heels to defend it.
The abrupt res­ig­na­tion of exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Bill Owens is stark evi­dence of the poten­tial consequences.
Owens based his deci­sion to leave the sto­ried broad­cast on the best rea­sons: prin­ci­ples, integri­ty and the courage of his convictions.
The pres­sures that forced him to make that painful choice are based on the worst rea­sons: delu­sions of grandeur, weak­ness and greed.
In an oft-quot­ed 1958 speech, Edward R Mur­row, arguably the lodestar of CBS News, said that TV “…can teach; it can illu­mi­nate; yes, and even it can inspire” . but  unless there is deter­mi­na­tion to use it  for those ends “…it’s noth­ing but wires and lights in a box.”
As for mon­e­tary val­ue, Mur­row not­ed: ”There is no sug­ges­tion here that net­works or indi­vid­ual sta­tions should oper­ate as phil­an­thropies. But I can find noth­ing in the Bill of Rights or in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act which says that they must increase their net prof­its each year, lest the Repub­lic collapse.”
Kow­tow­ing to what legal experts have termed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s “friv­o­lous law­suit” over the han­dling of an inter­view with Kamala Har­ris dur­ing the last pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, how­ev­er, con­tributes to under­min­ing said Republic.
The real crux of the mat­ter is the Trump administration’s less than sub­tle  threat to block a merg­er of Ms Redstone’s Para­mount and the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio Sky­dance, which would make her an esti­mat­ed 530-mil­lion dollars.
If she cares a whit about how that will fac­tor into the bal­ance sheet of her lega­cy, she might want to reflect upon how wealth fea­tures in the last­ing image of her predecessors.
William Paley was rich, but is best remem­bered for hav­ing bought the pre­cur­sor to CBS and turned into what became known as “The Tiffany Net­work”, for both its coura­geous, inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and ground­break­ing  enter­tain­ment shows like “All in the Family”.
Lau­rence Tisch had more mon­ey than he could prob­a­bly count,  but his efforts to turn CBS News into a cash cow earned him this quote in a New York Times obit­u­ary: ‘He took an insti­tu­tion that was impor­tant in this coun­try, and he stran­gled it.”

                     PRINCIPLE VS PRESSURE 

Enter­tain­ment being syn­ony­mous with Para­mount, I rec­om­mend that if she hasn’t  already, Ms Red­stone watch “The Post”, Steven Spielberg’s movie about the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lish­ing the Pen­ta­gon Papers.
The movie is in no way a doc­u­men­tary, but it “does do a rel­a­tive­ly good job in show­ing per­haps the most impor­tant bat­tle that test­ed First Amend­ment rights and gov­ern­men­t’s attempts to repress a sto­ry by the press.”
Pro­duc­er Amy Pas­cal described the film as “… the sto­ry of a woman find­ing her voice, and an entire coun­try find­ing its voice.”
It’s also the sto­ry of stand­ing with jour­nal­ists and the prin­ci­ples and integri­ty of the organ­i­sa­tion in whose name they labour. 
That’s what good edi­tors and pro­pri­etors do, accoun­tants and lawyers be damned.
.Which  brings us to…

                   THE GLASS CEILING

The metaphor in fem­i­nism for the invis­i­ble bar­ri­er of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry gen­der stereo­types pre­vent­ing women from ris­ing beyond a cer­tain point in an orga­ni­za­tion or hier­ar­chy, was very much in place when the Pen­ta­gon Papers sto­ry broke.
As Kather­ine Gra­ham did before her, it can be argued that by any mea­sure Ms Red­stone has bro­ken it too.
So why, it seems fair to ask, is she will­ing to metaphor­i­cal­ly sweep the bits and pieces up to appease a misog­y­nist who’s been con­vict­ed of sex­u­al abuse, and accused by 25 women, on the record, of sim­i­lar offences?
Jane Gooodall, whom no less than Nation­al Geo­graphic dubbed “the world’s pre­em­i­nent pri­ma­tol­o­gist and cham­pi­on for ani­mal con­ser­va­tion”, summed up her life’s work this way:
“What you do makes a dif­fer­ence, and you have to decide what kind of dif­fer­ence you want to make.”
Or, you can just opt to make a lot more money.
The choice is yours, Ms Red­stone. 

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