TV Journalists Fight Harassment in Newsrooms

In the wake of harassment allegations of male TV journalists--Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer--a group of current and former TV journalists are creating Press Forward, an effort to end harassment in newsrooms.

"The old way of doing things has hurt our colleagues, impaired our news organizations and hampered our ability to serve the public," the Press Forward web site says.

Former ABC News producer Dianna Pierce Burgess said that the #MeToo and #SilenceBreakers movements were a wake-up call that the status quo needed changing.

“This is for our daughters – so they can enter their careers with the level playing field we thought we had when we went to work," she said.

The goal is to study best practices and eventually release a report with recommendations for newsrooms and work environments, as well as to educate journalists about their rights and responsibilities, which is labeled a vacuum that needs filling.

Press Forward is funded by the Greater Washington Community Foundation, and will officially launch in early 2018.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.