On Monday’s episode of CBS This Morning, anchor Norah O’Donnell reported the news of CBS chief Les Moonves’s departure. “I think the most powerful media executive in America has resigned in the wake of this #MeToo movement. He’s my boss. Or, he was my boss, and that makes it really hard to comment on it,†O’Donnell told her co-anchors on air. Moonves stepped down Sunday night, hours after a New Yorker story reported accusations from six more women, who say the media executive sexually harassed or assaulted them. (Moonves denied the allegations.) O’Donnell said that Moonves always treated her with respect, but the CBS team has again found themselves reporting allegations of sexual misconduct against a powerful man in their ranks.
O’Donnell said she consulted with co-host Gayle King, who was out Monday, about what to say in the wake of Moonves’s exit (and ten months after Charlie Rose’s firing). “Here’s what I said back then, and I think it still holds so I want to say it again,†O’Donnell said. “There is no excuse for this alleged behavior. It is systematic and pervasive in our culture. And this I know is true, to the core of my being: women cannot achieve equality in the workplace or in society until there is a reckoning and a taking of responsibility.â€