0:00

Brits are complaining it's too long. They're saying

0:02

three weeks is it still not over yet?

0:05

In the UK, the election season

0:07

lasts six weeks. Can you imagine?

0:10

From WNYC in New York, this is

0:12

On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Also

0:15

on this week's show, hundreds of

0:17

post office workers in the UK were

0:19

prosecuted under mysterious

0:21

circumstances and largely

0:24

ignored until a TV show ignited

0:26

a fire. I

0:28

don't think you can point to a single television

0:31

drama which has had such a huge impact both

0:33

in terms of public anger

0:36

and then political movement. Plus,

0:38

what the tabloidy history of Paramount

0:40

can teach us about corporate media

0:43

today. One of them says I don't care

0:45

if 100 women or 50 women come forward with more accusations about

0:47

Moonves. He's

0:49

our guy. That's so preposterous.

0:52

Moonves is not anybody's guy on

0:54

the board of directors. It's

0:56

all coming up after this. If

1:26

you close your eyes and you think about a red apple,

1:28

what did you see? On

1:50

Radiolab. I cannot hear music without

1:52

having a complete music video. It's

1:55

like I have a TV on in the background. What

1:57

does it mean to see in your mind? I

1:59

can also walk through. my entire childhood house. I

2:01

can go into the backyard, I can walk to

2:03

my friend's house. Or not. Like

2:05

if I close my eyes and think about it,

2:07

like it's really just black. A

2:10

Fantasia on Radiolab. Listen wherever

2:12

you get those podcasts. This

2:16

is supported

2:21

by WNYC Studios. From

2:26

WNYC in New York, this

2:28

is On The Media. Mycaloans are out

2:30

this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Back

2:34

in January, there was speculation

2:36

that 2024 would see

2:38

both British and American

2:41

leadership elections. And

2:43

sure enough, in late May, drenched

2:45

in the pouring rain in front

2:48

of 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister

2:50

Rishi Sunet delivered. And

2:53

now it's the moment of recent detuning. To

2:56

decide whether we want to build on the progress we

2:59

have made or risk going back

3:01

to square one with no plans and no

3:03

certainty. British Prime Minister Rishi

3:05

Sunet just called for a surprise

3:07

early election on July 4th. Jonathan

3:11

Friedland, a columnist at The Guardian,

3:13

has written about the two other

3:15

times in history when our elections

3:17

overlapped with our cousins across the pond.

3:20

But before we tackle that, I asked

3:23

him to lay out the differences between

3:25

British and American electioneering, starting

3:27

with the fact that there are no primaries.

3:30

And political campaigns in

3:32

the UK are just

3:35

six weeks long. No

3:37

perpetual campaign? What

3:39

bliss. And yet.

3:41

Brits are complaining it's too long that it's

3:44

six weeks. They're saying three weeks is it still

3:46

not over yet? There's no

3:48

TV advertising. It's not allowed. So

3:51

much less expensive. Oh, it's pocket change.

3:54

What a British election costs. A

3:56

minor race in Indiana's second district

3:58

would burn through. You the

4:00

money that is spent on an

4:02

entire Uk General election and they're

4:05

very severe spending limits and they

4:07

all policemen candidates can go to

4:09

jail for breaching them. To the

4:11

big difference I think is very

4:13

relevant in terms of your recent

4:15

experience and perhaps experience. It's coming

4:18

in terms of contesting an election

4:20

and claiming it's rigged a British

4:22

election. Third know machines, there are

4:24

no levers, the anyone pool and

4:26

instead you have a small piece

4:28

of paper and a stubby. Pencil

4:30

and you have to mark and

4:33

X by the name is the

4:35

candidate you seats and that is

4:37

it they have encountered by hand.

4:40

One. Piece of paper after another. And

4:43

if someone wants a recount all the

4:45

pieces of paper, this that means. All.

4:47

Of the claims about rigging and so on,

4:49

they didn't really ever get off the ground

4:52

because they know that that bridge six and

4:54

can't really be tampered with. It's. Our

4:56

elections of overlaps with yours twice

4:58

in recent history and Sixty Four

5:01

and Ninety Two you've noticed some

5:03

patterns and how those elections has

5:05

influenced each other's which is thought

5:07

would sixty Four the year that.

5:10

Labor's. Harold. Wilson was

5:12

running against the Conservatives

5:15

incumbents Alec Douglas. Home,

5:17

so was just three weeks before

5:19

the Us Presidential elections. What's happened

5:22

there? There have been these very

5:24

rare moments where the stars align

5:26

on both sides of the Atlantic.

5:28

The big influence there was, in

5:30

a way retrospective. Harold Wilson was

5:33

offering himself, not as the British

5:35

Linda Jumps he was the Democrat

5:37

on the ballot in the United

5:39

States in the autumn of Nineteen

5:42

Sixty Four, but rather as Lyndon

5:44

Johnson's pre to as a British

5:46

Kennedy. Wilson. was the new generation

5:48

he was younger by british political

5:50

standards he was the first candidate

5:52

for that high office who had

5:55

actually been born in the twentieth

5:57

century he also like kennedy wanted

5:59

to be associated with technology. So

6:01

there was John F. Kennedy in

6:03

launching the moon shot. Harold Wilson

6:05

in Britain was talking about this

6:07

phrase, the white heat of technology

6:09

that was going to change everything.

6:11

The Britain that is going to

6:14

be forged in the white heat

6:16

of this revolution will be no

6:18

place for restrictive practices or for

6:20

outdated methods on either side of

6:22

industry. He even borrowed that signature

6:24

phrase of JFK, the new frontier,

6:27

the labor would take Britain to the

6:29

new frontier. So modernity,

6:31

youth, vigor, technology, those

6:33

were all Kennedy-esque motifs

6:35

and Harold Wilson won

6:37

that 1964 election. So

6:40

there was a real Kennedy mania

6:42

in Britain. I remember my own

6:44

father saying he stopped wearing a

6:47

hat in the

6:49

60s because Kennedy didn't wear a

6:51

hat. The hat makers were very

6:53

unhappy in the US. But let's jump to 92,

6:56

conservative incumbent John Major was fighting

6:58

to keep his seat in the

7:01

UK and he viewed the US

7:03

Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, as a

7:05

threat. You see here

7:08

a very clear overlap. In

7:11

that case, it wasn't just overlap. There was

7:13

actually cooperation or even if you want to

7:15

use the charge word collusion. I mean, the

7:17

conservatives who were in government in London worked

7:21

with covertly the Bush administration

7:23

and the Republicans in

7:26

Washington. It was George Herbert Walker Bush

7:28

seeking reelection, as you say. There

7:30

was an operation to dig up some

7:32

dirt on Bill Clinton who had lived

7:35

in Britain. He had been a student at

7:38

Oxford Road Scholar in the 60s. The

7:41

British Home Office went through their files

7:43

to dig up what they had on

7:45

Bill Clinton and did indeed find useful

7:47

things there about his travel, including

7:49

that he did make a trip

7:51

to Moscow. That featured then in

7:54

the Bush campaign against Clinton, trying to suggest he

7:56

was read under the bed. given

8:01

by Britain, by John Major, to George

8:04

H. W. Bush, partly because if an

8:06

American president asks, a British

8:08

prime minister is very reluctant ever to say

8:10

no. The Brits did

8:12

have their own motive a little bit. They were

8:14

suspicious of Bill Clinton in

8:17

terms of his position on Northern Ireland.

8:19

The suspicion then was that he would be a

8:22

sympathizer to the nationalist or

8:24

republican, mainly Catholic, side,

8:27

and therefore I don't

8:29

think it took much persuasion for John

8:31

Major to do a favor for his

8:33

friend across the Atlantic in what was

8:35

for both an election year. John

8:38

Major was trailing in the polls, but

8:40

he did win in 1992. People

8:44

thought that George H. W. Bush would

8:46

do the same, but he didn't.

8:49

As you observed, the generation that

8:51

took over after Major lost

8:53

to Tony Blair in 1997, and

8:57

that Blair copied a lot of Clinton's

8:59

tactics? It's quite right. In

9:02

the 90s, you couldn't move, if

9:04

you were in Dulles Airport, for British

9:06

politicians from the British Labour Party who

9:09

were coming in and out of DC

9:11

to get advice from Team

9:13

Clinton. They were engaged, they

9:15

believed, in almost identical projects,

9:17

which was just as Bill

9:19

Clinton had dragged his

9:22

party to the electable

9:24

center as they saw it and

9:26

casting himself as a new democrat.

9:29

So Tony Blair, together with Gordon Brown and

9:31

a couple of others, were embarked on

9:33

a similar project, which was to drag Labour

9:35

from the unelectable left as

9:38

they saw it, because Labour had lost

9:40

four elections in a row by the early

9:43

90s, to a place that

9:45

was new Labour, just like Bill Clinton

9:47

was a new democrat. They rebranded, and

9:50

they were constantly on the lookout for campaign

9:53

techniques. You would hear

9:55

Labour advisors saying, it's the economy, stupid,

9:57

quoting that poster up on the wall.

10:00

the Clinton War Room. This was

10:02

the period where British politicals in

10:04

Westminster could recite verbatim scripts from

10:07

the West Wing because they were

10:09

so steeped in it. I

10:12

love that you invoked the West Wing

10:14

because you've observed that House

10:16

of Cards, the Netflix series here,

10:19

was actually drawn from a

10:21

series about Westminster. Who

10:24

are the corridors of power in House of

10:26

Cards? I'm the chief of will, merely

10:29

a function of it. I don't have

10:31

the troops in line. And

10:37

I shall, of course, give my absolute

10:40

loyalty to whoever emerges as my leader.

10:43

Today, Henry Collingridge emerged as the

10:45

popular choice to lead his party

10:48

as Prime Minister. Well,

10:50

let's see how he does. That's

10:54

right. I mean, the traffic usually

10:56

goes one way across the Atlantic.

10:58

It's usually Brits learning from, aping,

11:01

imitating the Americans. But every now and

11:03

again, there's something the other way. So

11:05

I always think of this

11:08

one just because it's so rare. One

11:10

of the very few times a bit

11:12

of political craft was taken from Britain

11:14

by the Americans is none

11:16

other than the American president today,

11:18

Joe Biden. Everyone knows that Biden

11:20

ran for the top office three

11:22

times. The first time was all

11:24

the way back in 1988. And

11:26

one of the things that undid his campaign

11:29

was an allegation of plagiarism, I think

11:31

slightly unfair allegations. I remember that. Because

11:33

in that campaign in 1988, in

11:36

the Democratic primary, Joe Biden

11:38

repeatedly would credit and quote the

11:41

British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. Neil

11:43

Kinnock had said, Why am I

11:46

the first Kinnock in a thousand

11:48

generations to be able to get the university?

11:51

Joe Biden on the stump would say, Why

11:53

is it that Joe Biden is the first

11:56

in his family ever to go to a

11:58

university? Usually, He credited

12:00

Kinnock for that. But on this one

12:02

occasion, he didn't. And therefore,

12:05

he was open to this allegation of

12:07

plagiarism. And it was one of the

12:09

things that damaged him. Hard to believe

12:12

now when presidential candidates get away with

12:14

much more, including conviction of crimes. Those

12:18

were innocent times. But let's jump to

12:20

this year. How will these

12:22

two elections interact? People

12:25

have observed that the Labour

12:27

Party has been quite admiring

12:29

of Biden's presidential record. Will

12:32

the Labour Party's candidate,

12:34

Keir Starmer, look

12:37

to Biden for anything?

12:40

You hear all the time, Labour people, saying they

12:42

want to do a Biden. They want to do

12:44

in 2024 what Joe Biden did in

12:46

2020. Joe

12:49

Biden managed to be

12:51

sufficiently inoffensive to

12:53

be a receptacle for all

12:55

of the voters who were

12:57

disaffected with Donald Trump. Biden

13:00

didn't have enough negatives to put people

13:02

off for doing that. In a way

13:04

that Biden's strategy has become Keir Starmer's.

13:07

As we speak, Labour has just launched

13:09

its platform. There's almost

13:11

nothing really new or provocative or

13:13

controversial in it, because they think

13:15

in 2020 Biden won by being

13:17

not Trump, and they want

13:19

Starmer to win by being not conservative. I

13:23

just want to shift gears. This

13:25

month, there's been some drama unspooling

13:27

at the Washington Post. Its

13:29

new publisher and CEO, Will

13:32

Lewis, was poached straight from

13:34

Fleet Street, where print news is

13:37

almost inextricable from politics.

13:39

He used to work at The Telegraph,

13:41

which has a staunch pro-Tory stance. He's

13:44

been in hot water for his role in manipulating

13:46

news reporting to try and

13:49

clean up the phone hacking

13:51

scandal at the Murdoch papers over

13:53

a dozen years ago. Some

13:55

of the coverage claims that the British press

13:57

is just inherently different from the

13:59

the US press and that Lewis

14:02

is a creature of the British

14:04

press. What do you think of

14:06

that framing, first of all? I

14:08

mean, it's partly because of how partisan

14:11

the British press always has been. When

14:13

American newspapers 20, 30 years

14:16

ago would bend over backwards to seem

14:18

completely neutral, the British

14:20

newspapers famously associated with Fleet

14:22

Street here in London were

14:24

engaged in a raucous competition,

14:26

elbowing each other aside in

14:29

nakedly political competition. You'd have the Telegraph,

14:31

as you said, which is conservative. Most

14:35

of the newspapers actually are pro-Tory,

14:37

pro-right-wing papers, whether it's the Sun,

14:39

the Mail, the Telegraph. Then

14:41

more or less on their own, as a

14:43

left-of-center newspaper, my own one, The Guardian, there's

14:45

also the Mirror, a tabloid, a

14:48

noisy, vigorous press where there is

14:50

no shame or pretense about

14:52

coming at the news with an

14:54

attitude. The sheer competition,

14:56

because seven or eight national newspapers, all

14:59

headquartered in one city, meant

15:01

that the ethos was one

15:03

of aggressive news gathering,

15:06

getting scoops, and stealing a

15:08

march on your rivals. The American

15:10

newspaper market, you would have these big

15:12

city monopolies, one, sometimes two papers. It

15:15

meant those newspapers could take their time.

15:18

They didn't mind holding a story till the

15:20

next day or the day after, better to

15:22

be right than first. They were much more

15:24

stately. I do think there's

15:26

a political culture difference, too, which is the

15:28

rise of the activist newsrooms.

15:31

Newsrooms are often racked over issues of

15:34

identity, politics, and diversity, and that kind

15:36

of thing. There is just

15:38

a degree of impatience in a lot of

15:40

these British newspapers, especially the ones that Will

15:42

Lewis worked in. Not

15:44

really interested in you and

15:46

your identity, whether it's in terms of race

15:49

or gender. I want to know if you've

15:51

got the story. If you haven't,

15:53

there's the door. It would be a

15:55

massive culture shock for a lot of American journalists to find

15:57

this was landing in a British newsroom. a

16:00

lot of those differences have been smooth in

16:02

recent years because everyone's competing online in the

16:05

english language things are moved closer together and

16:07

so you saw. The post in

16:09

the new york times in the trump period

16:11

becoming in a way more opinionated but there

16:13

are still those differences and i do think

16:15

will this is probably walked right into the.

16:18

There's another media trope around all of

16:20

this that there is a british invasion

16:22

of the u.s. media media execs of

16:25

the washington post wall street journal and

16:27

cnn, suddenly all british no

16:30

it's quite true that there are some the

16:32

brits in a lot of senior positions it's

16:34

not entirely new there been british journalist making.

16:37

Great strides in american journalism for decades

16:39

tina brown at the new yorker the

16:42

tabloids end of the american market would often

16:44

have a britter the helm new york post

16:46

and other places. Having so

16:49

many at once i agree begins to

16:51

look like a pattern i

16:53

don't know whether it is partly some of

16:55

these publishers thinking. We need

16:57

people now who are used to being in

17:00

a nice fight and who need

17:02

to be aggressive. We

17:04

need people who are used to rolling up

17:06

their sleeves and not afraid to get their

17:08

hands very dirty in order to keep their

17:11

share of the market because that is what

17:13

a british journalist at the editorial level very.

17:16

Used to doing or it could just be

17:18

that it's just happened all at once but

17:21

either way because we're journalists we always do like

17:23

to draw connection. Two is

17:25

a coincidence three is a trend there

17:28

are now three good fleet

17:30

three practice group for you to immediately want

17:32

to trend story out of that that's exactly

17:34

what we would do here so maybe our

17:36

influence is rubbing. Thank

17:40

you so much johnson my great

17:42

pleasure guardian columnist johnson

17:45

freeland post the politics weekly

17:47

america. The

17:55

story about how the royal

17:58

mail delivered. This

18:01

is on the media. Meet

18:30

one of theater's most provocative voices. Next

18:32

time on Notes from America. Listen

18:34

wherever you get your podcasts. The

19:00

culpable mega banks went to jail.

19:03

They just got it off, leaving in

19:05

their weight a new phrase. Too

19:07

big to fail. But

19:09

in the UK, the process

19:12

of accountability is now in

19:14

seriously bad odor after one

19:16

particularly obtuse government entity to

19:18

hide a costly mistake. Callously

19:20

destroy the lives of many

19:23

hundreds of hard-working Britons and

19:25

ducked justice for decades. Now

19:28

however, comeuppance is finally afoot.

19:31

Because a recent TV docudrama

19:33

took on the story of

19:35

justice denied and crucially engaged

19:37

the public in a way

19:39

journalism could not. And

19:42

who is that rankest of villains

19:44

that infinite and endless liar? None

19:47

other than the great British post

19:49

office. It was the most widespread

19:52

miscarriage of justice in UK history.

19:55

700 hard-working postmasters and

19:57

postmistresses prosecuted for the

20:00

fast, fraud, and false accounting from

20:02

the late 90s to 2015. But

20:05

the problem was not the writers, it

20:07

was dodgy accounting for square. From 1999 to 2015,

20:09

more than 900 postmasters and

20:15

mistresses, sub-postmasters they're called,

20:17

were prosecuted, blamed for

20:20

mistakes generated by Fujitsu's

20:22

buggy Horizon IT system,

20:24

which was deployed at

20:26

great expense and with much

20:28

hoopla by the post office. In

20:31

the UK, local post

20:33

offices are essentially franchises

20:35

overseen by the national post office,

20:38

but owned and operated by private

20:40

citizens. They have to

20:42

make up for any shortfalls or

20:44

they risk the sack or prosecution.

20:47

Like Lee Castleton, who bought a post

20:49

office in East Yorkshire from 20 years

20:52

ago. So we got to

20:54

the Christmas of the first year, just six

20:56

months in and we had a misbalance and

20:58

we hadn't had a misbalance before. It

21:00

was for 1,103 pounds and 68 P. And

21:04

I spent hours and hours and hours

21:06

looking for why. Like many others, he

21:09

covered the shortfalls with his dwindling savings,

21:11

but the problem persisted. He

21:13

suspected it lay in the new

21:16

accounting software, but he was assured

21:18

that no one else had this

21:20

problem and the post office

21:22

helpline was no help at all. In

21:25

fact, I made over 91 calls over the

21:27

12 weeks. I constantly

21:29

pestered and rang and rang and rang,

21:31

asking for help and they just ignored

21:33

me. At the end of his rope,

21:35

he asked for an audit. The post

21:37

office auditor arrived and claimed Lee owed

21:39

25,000 pounds. Post

21:42

office took him to court to get him to

21:45

repay, but he didn't have it. And

21:47

being broke, he represented himself. While

21:49

the post offices, many barristers rang

21:51

up 321,000 pounds in legal fees. When

21:56

inevitably Lee lost, he was slammed

21:58

with that bill. along with the

22:00

original 25,000, devastating. My

22:04

wife suffered seizures from anxiety, which

22:06

led into epilepsy, which she'd never

22:08

suffered before. And I

22:10

started having problems with my V, his nerve, which

22:12

meant that every so often, my

22:14

body would just stop and I would

22:17

just collapse. And then

22:19

over the period after the court case,

22:21

my eldest child, my daughter, Millie, the

22:24

only thing that she could control

22:26

was her eating. And

22:29

that led to her having an

22:31

eating disorder, which lasted 10 years.

22:35

The difficulties just caused my

22:37

life and my family's life

22:40

to disintegrate for years and just,

22:43

I was powerless to do anything to help

22:46

anything. And I was the only one, which

22:48

is what the post office was said to

22:50

us constantly. And it

22:52

was that feeling of helplessness and being

22:54

unable to make people understand that I'd

22:57

never taken any money. We

22:59

didn't deserve to be treated like we

23:01

were being treated. Lee turned to the

23:03

press for some computer savvy. There was

23:05

a magazine in the UK called Computer

23:07

Weekly that were offering technical help. But

23:09

I had this heap of paperwork from

23:11

the court case. It was

23:13

a lot of riposte data that I just

23:15

didn't, I couldn't understand. And I knew that

23:18

somewhere in this paperwork must have been a

23:20

reason, because I knew the reason that the

23:22

money was supposedly missing wasn't because it had

23:24

been taken. I knew that. So it was

23:26

a case of finding the real reason. So

23:29

I reached out to Tony Collins, who's

23:31

the editor of Computer Weekly. He

23:33

handed me a letter and it was from Lee

23:36

Castleton. Reporter, Rebecca Thompson. I think that one of

23:38

us will be able to make some sense of

23:40

what was going on. He

23:42

lost everything, like lost his house, couldn't

23:45

get a mortgage, couldn't get a bank account.

23:48

Had two young children. His entire childhood had

23:50

been colored by this whole thing.

23:53

And he was just a bit of broken man, really.

23:56

After Rebecca published her investigation,

23:58

six more sub-posters. Masters went

24:00

on the record about weird problems with

24:03

the software. Wow, this

24:05

is big, she thought. But

24:07

there wasn't really much response.

24:09

People were interested, but they would look into

24:11

it and they'd come back to us and

24:14

say, we can't do anything with it. We

24:16

got really close with Channel 4 News.

24:18

And then some editors somewhere got cold feet.

24:20

We couldn't really get anyone to follow it

24:22

up because it was the

24:25

Postmasters' word against Post offices, and

24:27

the Post offices was lying. The

24:29

Post office called up editors at

24:31

major newspapers to discredit Computer Weekly's

24:33

account, its phone walled journalists, and

24:36

pressured the sub-Postmasters to plead out

24:38

to avoid jail time. Still,

24:40

there were serious investigations, and in 2019,

24:42

the High Court did rule that

24:46

the software was defective, that those

24:49

convicted could move to have

24:51

their convictions overturned and claim

24:53

compensation. In fact, a

24:56

public inquiry has been underway

24:58

since 2021, but few noticed,

25:00

and the march to accountability

25:02

has been glacially slow. Until

25:05

now, the decisive moment

25:07

occurred on January 1st this

25:09

year. On New Year's

25:11

Day, England is pretty much closed and

25:13

people watch TV. That's

25:16

when ITV, a British channel,

25:18

presented the first in a

25:20

four-part docudrama called Mr. Bates

25:23

versus the Post Office. The

25:25

computer system Post Office spent an arm and

25:27

a leg on is faulty. No

25:30

one else has ever reported any

25:32

problems with Horizon. No one.

25:34

You're responsible for the loss. I haven't got

25:36

that money, and I

25:39

don't know where it's gone. I

25:41

think it made a phenomenal amount

25:43

of difference. Journalist Nick Wallace has

25:45

long covered the story, authored

25:48

the book The Great Post Office Scandal,

25:50

and consulted on the drama. He reckons

25:52

that if some 10% of the public had

25:55

heard about the scandal before January

25:57

1st, 2024, now

25:59

it's over. It's more like 80 or 90%. My

26:03

feet didn't really hit the ground after the drama

26:05

started going out because my phone kept ringing and

26:07

people kept wanting to talk to me on the

26:09

radio and the TV and they're like, so six

26:11

days after episode four had

26:13

finished, I thought, well, just

26:15

sit down and watch the evening news

26:18

just to see what else is going

26:20

on in the world. And as I

26:22

sat down and watched the BBC 10

26:24

o'clock news, the first three pieces were

26:26

all about the post office scandal. A

26:28

giant step towards justice for hundreds of

26:30

innocent people caught up in the post

26:32

office scandal. Now you do

26:34

not get the first three pieces

26:36

of a television news bulletin unless

26:38

it's something like Russia

26:40

going into Ukraine or Israel going

26:43

into Gaza. The idea that the

26:45

BBC would spend its first three

26:47

pieces talking about the post office scandal

26:50

sparked by a drama made by

26:52

a competitor channel was

26:54

just mind blowing. And that

26:56

to me will always stick in my

26:58

mind as to the impact that this

27:00

drama had on the body politic, on

27:03

the media, on the national conversation. It

27:05

was electrifying and infuriating. Suddenly

27:07

a quarter century since the

27:09

first complaints about the software, the

27:11

post office faced real consequences for

27:13

throwing Lee Castleton in hundreds like

27:15

him under a bus. Many

27:18

sub postmasters went to jail.

27:20

Many more bankrupted themselves to

27:22

cover the mysterious shortfalls. A

27:24

few killed themselves and quite

27:27

a few have since died waiting for

27:29

justice. Some context,

27:31

when in 1999, the post office deployed the

27:34

horizon software to its more than 18,000 branches,

27:38

it was described as the

27:40

largest IT system in Europe.

27:42

The fundamental problem was it didn't work.

27:44

It couldn't add up properly. And yet

27:47

the post office rather than trust it's

27:49

a postmasters who were having all sorts of

27:52

problems getting their accounts to balance after they

27:54

imported this new system. Actually

27:56

believed that what the IT system was showing

27:58

was the level of criminal. criminality that

28:01

was going on in the branches up and down

28:03

the country. And one thing

28:05

we learned from the drama and

28:07

the reporting is that Fujitsu knew

28:09

that it had been prematurely implemented.

28:11

And so workers would slip into

28:13

various postmasters accounts in order to

28:16

sort of fix the bugs, maybe

28:18

introduce some new ones, while

28:20

these sub-postmasters were being told there is

28:22

no problem, that their complaints are the

28:25

only complaints. I can't understand why it's

28:27

happened again. Me neither. Nobody

28:29

else has these problems. It says I've taken

28:32

£2,032.67 more than I think I have.

28:38

Okay, re-declare your stock holding so that

28:40

will automatically create a discrepancy. Okay, that

28:42

will have inflated your cash holding. So

28:44

now I want you to reverse that

28:46

difference. Right-o. So now if you

28:48

re-declare everything it will balance, okay? Oh

28:51

my god. It's

28:54

just doubled right in front of my eyes. No,

28:57

no, it says I'm £4,000, don't it? It'll

29:00

sort itself out, please, Inge-dupe. In the meantime...

29:03

I was only doing what you told me. In

29:05

the meantime, you'll need to make good the loss. I

29:08

haven't got that money. And I

29:10

don't know where it's gone. I'm

29:13

sorry, you are responsible for balancing your account and

29:15

making good any shortfalls. The

29:17

post office had basically bet

29:19

the farm on this system working. They

29:22

had decided that they

29:24

had to sell the Horizon system not

29:26

just to the postmasters and the public,

29:28

but also to big institutional clients who

29:30

would bolt on their systems into the

29:33

Horizon system to allow the post office

29:35

to sell products like foreign exchange, travel

29:37

insurance for banks to be able to

29:39

use banking services through the system. So

29:42

they could not have any word

29:44

getting out that this Horizon system

29:46

was shaky. And yet internally, it

29:49

knew that it was. The system was not fit

29:51

for purpose when it was rolled out in October

29:54

1999. And in November

29:56

1999, there was a

29:58

secret internal Fujitsu report. written

30:00

by their internal auditor, who said that

30:02

the cash accounting integrity of their IT

30:05

system, which was at the very heart

30:07

of Horizon Software, simply could

30:09

not be relied on. So the

30:11

post office and Fujitsu knew this

30:13

system was incredibly shaky, and yet

30:16

they inflicted it on these poor

30:18

sub postmasters, and then pursued them

30:20

for these phantom discrepancies. It's incredible.

30:23

How did you first come to this story? I

30:26

was working in a local radio station

30:28

in Surrey in 2010, when

30:31

I got a tweet from a

30:34

company called Surrey Cars, telling me that

30:36

they wanted to bid for the BBC

30:38

Surrey taxi account. I think I

30:40

said something flip at night. Oh, it depends whether

30:43

your drivers have got any great stories that they want to come

30:45

on air and tell us. And Surrey

30:47

Cars tweeted back saying, oh, I've got a story to

30:49

tell you, all right. Give me a call after you've

30:51

finished your show. So I

30:54

called up Surrey Cars, and Surrey Cars turned out

30:56

to be a one man band

30:58

called Dvinda Misra. And over 40 very

31:01

tearful minutes, he told me how his

31:03

pregnant wife had been thrown in prison

31:05

for a crime she didn't commit. By

31:07

that stage, Alan Bates had already formed

31:09

the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. So within

31:11

an hour of talking to Dvinda, I

31:13

was talking to Alan. That's the

31:16

Alan Bates of the series Mr.

31:18

Bates versus the post office. He

31:20

knew his way around computers and

31:22

convinced that the software was fishy.

31:24

He refused to sign off on

31:26

the reports it was generating. So

31:29

he was fired, lost most of his

31:31

savings, retired with his wife to the

31:33

countryside, obsessed with the unfairness of it

31:36

all, and ultimately found a

31:38

way to gather some of the far

31:40

flung victims together. We've

31:42

been talking to people across the

31:44

South accused of cooking the books,

31:46

but they swear they've done nothing

31:48

wrong. So what's up behind

31:51

the counters of our post offices?

31:53

Nick Wallace reports. And that's

31:55

how my interest in the story started.

31:58

The story is fascinating. on

32:00

its face. We're all so interested

32:02

in it because it took

32:05

so long to break into

32:07

the public eye. Part

32:09

of it is because it's a very difficult story to

32:11

tell. You have to

32:14

explain what some postmasters are,

32:16

the nature of their relationship

32:18

with the post office. They're

32:20

sort of self-employed, franchisee come

32:22

agents who have invested

32:24

in the business but still represent

32:26

the government owned post office. Then

32:29

you've got to say, well, they believe

32:31

that this IT system is throwing up

32:34

discrepancies which they're being held criminally liable

32:36

for. And then on top of that, you had

32:38

the fact that so many of these postmasters had

32:40

pleaded guilty to the crimes which they

32:42

now say they weren't responsible

32:45

for. And so you had these layers

32:47

and layers of difficulty in selling these

32:49

stories to newspaper editors or TV commissioners

32:52

because it was just so naughty. And

32:54

frankly, if it wasn't for Alan Bates

32:56

taking the post office to the high

32:58

court and having a brilliant high court

33:01

judge actually who understood the issues inside

33:03

out, pull them apart, line by line,

33:05

line of code by line of code,

33:08

piece of evidence by piece of documentary evidence,

33:10

then we wouldn't have got this story out into

33:12

the public domain at all. Tovey

33:14

Jones plays Bates with sly

33:16

pugnacity and an unshakable sense

33:18

of purpose. They say money's somehow gone

33:21

missing from this branch which he's housed

33:23

and I have to pay it back,

33:26

which I won't. So I say

33:28

prove it, prove that I'm

33:30

wrong and you're right. Show

33:33

me the figures. But they can't or

33:35

won't do that. So now

33:37

they want to close me down to shut

33:39

me up. That's ridiculous. Because they don't want

33:41

everyone knowing what I know. Which

33:44

is that the fancy new computer system that

33:46

they've spent an arm and a leg on

33:48

is faulty. Now there's

33:50

a public inquiry underway through the

33:53

end of July to uncover more

33:55

details about the scandal, including who's

33:57

to blame. Prime Minister Rishi

33:59

Sunnis... introduced a bill to

34:01

exonerate all the wrongly convicted postmasters.

34:04

And the head of the post office,

34:06

during the height of the scandal,

34:08

Paula Venels, had her CBE,

34:11

an honor awarded by the British

34:13

Empire, revoked. And

34:15

viewers could watch her cry

34:17

in hearings about three weeks

34:19

ago. I fully accept now

34:22

that the post office knew that. I completely accept that.

34:25

And I think I

34:29

completely accepted. Personally, I didn't

34:31

know that. And I'm incredibly sorry

34:33

that that happened to those people

34:35

and to so many others. And you believe

34:37

that the drama actually made

34:40

all this possible? So the

34:42

impact of Mr. Bates versus the post office,

34:45

I think, is unprecedented. Certainly in

34:47

the UK, I don't think you

34:49

can point to a single drama,

34:51

television drama, which has had such

34:53

a huge impact, both in terms

34:55

of public anger and then political

34:57

movement for decades, if

34:59

ever. The TV show

35:02

was the result of a decade

35:04

of journalism and sub postmasters refusing

35:06

to give up on trying to

35:08

get justice. Now, the

35:10

success of the show has led

35:12

to more journalism, more media and

35:15

attempts to get accountability.

35:19

Sometimes it feels like we live in

35:21

an age where powerful people seem untouched

35:24

by scandal. The scandal is

35:26

a story where the truth is

35:28

finally coming out, albeit slowly. Victims

35:30

are being believed. Does this make

35:33

you feel any differently about

35:35

journalism and accountability? Well,

35:37

Brooke, you may disagree, but I

35:39

think the American system is far

35:42

more effective than the system we've

35:44

got over here in the UK.

35:46

You have politically appointed prosecutors who

35:49

follow public opinion and the

35:51

political priorities of the people who elected

35:54

them. And when it comes to white

35:56

collar crime like this, they

35:59

are accepted. good at presenting evidence

36:01

to people lower down the chain who

36:03

might then plead guilty to a lesser

36:05

crime and offer the evidence that they

36:07

have so that you're able to

36:09

go after the people who are ultimately

36:12

responsible, the chief executives of an

36:14

organization who may have failed catastrophically.

36:16

You mean the presidents of the United

36:18

States? Yeah, well, there's the ultimate

36:20

example, isn't it? What's been happening in recent

36:23

weeks. But I mean, I think the United

36:25

States much better than our system has us

36:27

over here. If you look at all the

36:29

scandals that we've had in this country, the

36:31

infected blood scandal, the Windrush scandal, the banking

36:34

crisis, Hillsborough, the various NHS scandals, how many

36:36

people have actually gone to prison? How many

36:38

people have actually been successfully criminally prosecuted as

36:40

a result of them? Almost

36:42

none. And we don't have

36:45

the laws actually that will make executives in

36:47

this country look at a problem

36:49

and say, if I don't do something

36:51

proactive and positive about this, there's

36:53

a good chance I'll go to jail. This

36:55

job has taught me that we've got things

36:58

wrong in this country when it comes to

37:00

incentivizing people to do the right thing. It

37:02

may be that this scandal is so big

37:04

and public awareness of it is so large

37:06

that it becomes a game changer and

37:09

things do happen more positively going forward. But

37:11

at the moment, I'm not holding out much

37:13

hope. And the weaker and weaker that journalism

37:16

gets, the more under-resourced it gets, the

37:18

less likely it is that these stories are going to

37:20

be brought to the public's attention. We're

37:24

still fighting. I wish it wasn't. Lee

37:27

Castleton. But I'm never so grateful

37:29

that people are listening. It just shows you what you

37:31

can do if you really want to do something. You

37:34

know, you can move mountains, can't you? You

37:36

know, there's so many things that the

37:39

drama has brought about. All

37:41

of a sudden, people wanted to hear. I

37:43

can't tell you how grateful the whole group are for

37:45

that because sometimes, no matter

37:48

how hard you scream, people

37:50

don't react. But people are

37:52

listening every day now and that's quite

37:54

wonderful. TV

38:00

show. You need cinematic

38:02

harm, sympathetic victims, and the

38:05

perpetrator not too big to

38:07

fail. And no

38:09

cynics. I mean, ultimately, the moral

38:11

of this story, like so many we tell,

38:14

is that when making things

38:16

right requires a coalition of

38:18

the law, journalism, politics,

38:20

and people, lots of people,

38:23

cynicism is even

38:25

more corrosive than the frantic

38:27

attempts to cover butts inside

38:30

the bunkers of government.

38:36

Coming up, the red stones are

38:38

on the rocks. This is

38:41

on the media. This

38:45

week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, is running a

38:48

country the worst job ever? It's

38:50

not imposter syndrome. You are literally an

38:52

imposter and you're literally on television all

38:54

the time claiming to

38:56

understand things you don't understand and claiming to

38:59

control things you don't control. Rory

39:01

Stewart on the fallout of Brexit and

39:03

the soul-crushing reality of politics. That's all

39:06

on the New Yorker Radio Hour from

39:08

WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your

39:10

podcasts. This

39:16

is on the media. I'm Brooke

39:18

Gladstone. So this week, Paramount Global,

39:20

the company that once launched the

39:23

likes of MTV, 60 Minutes,

39:25

and The Daily Show, teetered

39:28

on the edge of a massive merger.

39:31

Sherry Redstone, the controlling shareholder,

39:33

pursued the deal for over

39:36

six months despite the resignation

39:38

of four board members. She even

39:40

ousted the CEO of Paramount

39:42

Global who criticized the merger.

39:45

And then there were several other

39:47

bidders along the way, but the merger seemed

39:50

almost certain until yesterday's abrupt collapse.

39:52

Redstone pulled out at the last

39:54

minute. One commentator called it, quote,

39:56

the looniest sales process in the

39:58

history of the world. of public

40:00

companies. Wow, what a twist

40:02

and, I mean, what options does she have

40:05

left? We need a new

40:07

reality program in here, Kelly, like, you

40:09

know, mergers the class. Shares in Paramount

40:11

Global dropped nearly 8% once

40:14

Redstone's decision got out and the

40:16

fate of the once formidable company

40:18

twists in the wind. But

40:21

reality show type drama is

40:23

in the Redstone tradition, which

40:25

did not abate when Sherry

40:27

inherited the company from her father,

40:29

Sumner, who died in 2020 at

40:32

the age of 97. He

40:34

would joke that he did not need to make plans

40:36

for succession because he was going to live

40:38

forever. Was it a joke? That's,

40:41

I was about to say, I think a lot of people thought

40:43

he was only half joking. Rachel Abrams

40:45

is the co-author with James

40:47

Stewart of Unscripted, the epic

40:49

battle for a media empire

40:52

and the Redstone family legacy.

40:55

Let's talk about his kids. His son eventually

40:57

got set up, sold his shares to the

40:59

company, moved to a ranch in Colorado, never

41:02

spoke to the family again, didn't attend the

41:04

father's funeral. His daughter,

41:06

Sherry Redstone, he was even

41:08

worse to her. Yes,

41:11

he would publicly berate his daughter.

41:13

He would call her unfathomable

41:15

things in emails that are seen by

41:18

other people. He was so

41:20

temperamental that, you know, there were points

41:22

where he would say that he wanted

41:24

Sherry Redstone to take over and

41:26

then later on he would excoriate her.

41:28

But no matter how badly he treated

41:31

her, it was still her father. And

41:33

up until the day he died,

41:35

you know, she hoped that he loved her.

41:38

Let's talk about then how

41:40

Sherry actually saved him in a way.

41:44

He was a real womanizer. He

41:47

would pursue multiple women at the same

41:49

time. Some of the women he had

41:51

relationships with ended up working for his

41:53

businesses. But he paid a hefty price

41:56

for that in your telling of events.

41:58

He used his best wealth and... resources to take

42:00

over the lives of women he was trying

42:02

to pursue. There was a flight

42:04

attendant on the corporate jets that he basically got

42:07

fired, but then dangled job prospects

42:09

in front of so that she would have

42:11

dinner with him and accompany him to events.

42:14

You know, these are really objectionable,

42:16

horrific ways to treat women. And

42:19

as somebody writing about our book put

42:21

it, two of his perhaps most observant

42:23

students used his own tactics against

42:25

him because toward the end of his life, when

42:28

he was losing the ability to

42:30

advocate for himself, you know, his

42:32

cognitive function was deteriorating. These

42:35

two women who at times were

42:37

romantic partners or companions, maybe caregivers,

42:39

Manuela Hertzer and Sidney Holland, they basically

42:41

one after the other move into his

42:43

mansion and take over

42:46

his life. They isolate him from his family.

42:48

They tell him his family doesn't love him.

42:51

And in one afternoon, each one of them

42:53

was wired $45 million in a single afternoon.

42:58

These two women got very close

43:00

to having Sumner add them to

43:02

the trust, controlling his empire to

43:05

gaining access to this multi-billion

43:07

dollar media fortune. For

43:09

all of Sumner Redstone's money and power

43:11

and resources, you would think that

43:13

there would be guardrails around him to keep

43:16

out people like these women. And yet there

43:18

weren't large part because Sumner had excommunicated

43:21

everybody that really cared about him from

43:23

his circles. And let's

43:25

talk about Sidney Holland. Apparently

43:28

Bravo's millionaire matchmaker, Patty Stanger,

43:30

hooked him up with Sidney

43:33

Holland and less than a

43:35

year later he proposed to

43:37

her. She moves in

43:39

and takes on all the roles

43:41

you mentioned. But apparently it is

43:43

his daughter who's finally able to

43:45

loosen the grip of

43:48

both Hertzer and Holland. How

43:50

did she do that? Stanger,

43:52

as you mentioned, set up Sumner

43:54

with Sidney Holland. And one thing

43:56

that Patty Stanger told Sidney Holland

43:58

was Sumner Redstone... Stone is old

44:00

school. He is going to go out

44:02

and do whatever he wants, but if

44:04

you are to be involved with him,

44:07

you cannot step out on this man.

44:09

And Sidney Holland unbeknownst to Sumner Redstone

44:11

was having an affair with a man

44:14

named George Pilgrim in Sedona, Arizona. And

44:16

she would take the private jet to

44:18

spend romantic afternoons and evenings with George,

44:20

and then she'd fly home back to

44:23

the Beverly Park mansion where Sumner lived

44:25

before he had gone to sleep. So

44:27

he would be none the wiser. And

44:30

Sidney would just shower George Pilgrim, who

44:32

was at one point an actor, hit

44:34

a recurring role on a famous soap

44:37

opera. He had been in a couple sort

44:39

of cult hit movies. He had

44:41

also been on my personal favorite credit, the

44:43

history channel's ancient aliens and

44:46

George is really into aliens. So he

44:48

embarks on this whirlwind romance with Sidney

44:50

Holland, who by the way, says, I

44:53

can buy your book. He was shopping a book

44:55

at the time to make it into a movie

44:58

deal. Any of your dreams I can make it

45:00

happen. In the midst of all of this, there

45:02

are so many questions about Sumner's cognitive

45:04

abilities and who's really controlling him

45:06

and what does this mean

45:08

for the company? There's a lot of

45:10

speculation, media circles, and Bill Cohan, who

45:12

was a reporter at Vanity Fair, gets

45:14

interviews with both Manuela and Sidney and

45:16

they're wearing ball gowns and professing their love

45:19

for Sumner. And it's a fantastic

45:21

feature. And Sidney Holland says in this article,

45:23

as quoted as talking about how much she

45:25

loves Sumner and how beautiful his hair is.

45:28

And in Sedona, Arizona, this article comes

45:30

out and George Pilgrim, who thinks Sidney

45:32

Holland is a woman he's going to

45:34

marry and he's been having this affair

45:36

with, he sees this, he's infuriated and

45:38

he's embarrassed. He calls up Bill Cohan,

45:41

the Vanity Fair reporter, and he tells

45:43

Bill, you know, how he and Sidney

45:45

have actually been carrying on all this

45:47

time. Bill writes another article. Sumner

45:50

Redstone sees this and much as

45:52

Patty Sanger, the millionaire matchmaker, had

45:54

warned Sidney Holland. He goes ballistic,

45:57

kicks out Sidney Holland, Manuela

45:59

hurts. gets kicked out of the mansion, and

46:02

after these two women leave his

46:04

life, that is when Sherry

46:06

Redstone, his daughter, is able to

46:08

come back in and start repairing

46:11

the relationship with her father, get back

46:13

in his good graces, spend more time

46:15

with him, and ultimately cements her role

46:17

as the successor to his

46:19

media empire, which was very close

46:22

to being taken over, or at

46:24

least partially taken over by these

46:26

women. So, going back

46:28

to the business behind all the drama,

46:30

you didn't expect to tell the stories

46:33

of the Redstone family when you started your

46:35

research, right? What was the story you were

46:37

going to tell? At the height of

46:39

the Me Too movement, the New

46:41

Yorker published a couple stories about

46:43

Les Moonves, the former head of

46:46

CBS, in which a total of

46:48

12 women accused him of sexual

46:50

misconduct as far

46:53

back as I think the late 80s, and

46:55

in September 2018, CBS announces that

46:58

Moonves is out, he's gone. And

47:01

Jim got a tip that the real reason

47:03

Moonves left CBS had nothing to do with

47:06

the stories in the New Yorker, even though

47:08

it appeared that way, because every day, if

47:10

you'll recall, in the fall of 2018, there

47:12

was a new story about a new man

47:15

being ousted for sexual misconduct

47:17

accusations. But Jim had

47:19

gotten a tip that it was actually

47:21

because of Moonves's attempts to silence a

47:23

woman he feared would go public with

47:26

totally new accusations. He was

47:28

basically being blackmailed to keep this woman quiet

47:30

by offering her film roles and doing

47:33

other things. And when CBS investigators

47:35

questioned him about this, he

47:37

did a lot to mislead investigators. And

47:39

it was that vulnerability to blackmail, that

47:41

poor judgment that ultimately caused CBS to

47:44

determine he was too much of a

47:46

liability and needed to go. So

47:48

Jim had gotten a tip about

47:50

this. And separately, I had heard

47:52

from a source who was in

47:54

this incredible position to know what

47:57

the investigators had uncovered about

47:59

Moonves. and Jim and I ended up pairing

48:01

up, doing a few different stories for the

48:04

New York Times. I think we wanted to

48:06

elaborate on the story about

48:09

what caused Les Moonves to be ousted from

48:11

CBS and how that changed the trajectory of

48:13

this massive media empire. We

48:18

always understood that part of that story was going

48:20

to be understanding how much this mattered to

48:24

Sherry Redstone. And what I mean by that is, right before

48:26

Moonves gets ousted

48:29

from CBS, he launches what amounts to a coup

48:33

against Sherry Redstone and the Redstone

48:35

family, because

48:37

he does not appreciate that she

48:39

is, in his mind, meddling

48:42

in his business. Sherry Redstone,

48:45

right around 2018, is talking to Moonves

48:47

about how she wants to merge Viacom and CBS.

48:50

And at that time, CBS was doing very

48:53

well, and Viacom was really struggling, as

48:55

many legacy media businesses have been,

48:57

with changes in the media landscape,

48:59

streaming, all of that. Sherry

49:01

thought that the two companies should be united, media

49:03

companies need scale. Moonves

49:05

did not want to hear that, and

49:08

he resented her from inserting herself, in his

49:10

view. And he

49:13

and his loyalists on the board of

49:15

directors of CBS decided to launch a

49:17

lawsuit that would have stripped the Redstone

49:19

family of control of the Redstone family

49:21

business. And Jim

49:24

and I wanted our readers to understand what

49:27

that would have felt like for Sherry Redstone, which

49:30

was a gut punch. It was a gut punch for her,

49:32

not just because it was a family business, and

49:34

not just because she had considered less Moonves to

49:36

be a friend of hers, but

49:39

because she had just finished fighting

49:42

to get these two women,

49:44

Manuela Hertzer and Sydney Holland,

49:46

out of her father's life, and

49:49

then to turn around and face

49:51

this lawsuit that would strip her

49:53

of control or threaten her place

49:55

once again after just winning this very painful

49:57

battle, we wanted our readers to understand what that would have felt like for

49:59

Sherry Redstone. understand what the stakes were,

50:01

what the emotional stakes were, and where

50:03

this whole thing would have fallen within

50:06

the timeline of Sherri Redstone's relationship with

50:08

her father and her family in the business.

50:11

What does the story of this one

50:13

media mogul tell us

50:15

about the structural issues in

50:18

the media industry today? You've

50:20

said that this should be taught in business schools.

50:23

One of the big lessons here is about corporate governance

50:25

or the lack thereof, that all of these

50:28

people who were supposed to be looking out

50:30

for the best interests of shareholders absolutely

50:32

failed to do so. What

50:35

I mean by that is when the

50:37

board of directors of CBS learned about

50:39

rumors that their CEO Les Moonves could

50:41

be or had been accused of sexual

50:44

misconduct, they did

50:46

basically nothing. What they did was they

50:48

hired an outside lawyer to essentially ask

50:50

Moonves, hey, is there anything we should

50:52

be worried about? And took him

50:55

at his word when he basically said no. And

50:57

Sherri Redstone was furious at the time, as

50:59

is detailed in our book. She writes a

51:01

letter to the board of directors basically saying,

51:03

I can't believe that you would call this

51:05

an investigation. This is not an investigation. And

51:08

the board of directors, their response to some

51:10

of these rumors or accusations of misconduct is

51:12

at one point one of them says, I

51:14

don't care if 100 women or 50 women

51:16

come forward with

51:18

more accusations about Moonves. He's our

51:20

guy. And that's so

51:22

preposterous. Moonves is not anybody's guy

51:25

on the board of directors. The

51:27

board of directors represent the shareholders

51:29

in CBS. And this book

51:31

really shows you these corporate boards, which are

51:33

often made up of people who have to

51:36

attend a handful of meetings a year, not

51:38

really do too much. They get to take

51:40

a nice paycheck home when there is an

51:42

actual crisis and problem to be dealt with.

51:45

This is a window into an

51:47

incredible case where they just completely

51:49

failed to step up to the

51:52

plate and react appropriately. So

51:54

I think that it really tells you something about

51:56

corporate governance in corporate America that goes beyond the

51:59

media industry. Rachel Abrams

52:01

is the co-author of Unscripted, the

52:03

epic battle for a media empire

52:06

and the Redstone family legacy. Rachel,

52:09

thank you very much. Thank you so much. And

52:31

that's the show. Un The Media

52:33

is produced by Eloise Blondio, Molly

52:36

Rosen, Rebecca Clark Calendar, and

52:38

Candice Wong with help from

52:41

Pamela Apia. Our

52:43

technical director is Jennifer Munson.

52:45

Our engineer this week is

52:47

Brendan Dalton. Katya Rogers is

52:49

our executive producer. Un

52:51

The Media is a production of

52:53

WNYC Studios. I'm Brittany Dolan.

53:10

I'm David Ramdick, host of The New Yorker Radio

53:12

Hour. There's nothing like finding

53:14

a story you can really sink into that

53:16

lets you tune out the noise

53:18

and focus on what matters. In

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