Former CBS News reporter Don Champion described discrimination and harassment over his treatment as a gay black man at the network in a Facebook post in late January that has since gone viral.
Champion named CBS executives David Friend and Peter Dunn in the complaint and said he was told to “butch it up” and stop “queening out” on the air. Dunn and Friend were the focus of an L.A. Times article late last month alleging racism and misogny from the top execs.
Said Champion: “By the end of my time at WCBS about a year and a half later I was asked if I had ‘gained weight.’ There. Was. Always. An. Excuse. And there were consequences for me. The number of days WCBS offered me to work each week ebbed and flowed- depending on how David felt about me. My life and career were under the control of a bigot. After live shots, I’d get emails from David complaining about little things like a fumbled word on-air. One time, he embarrassed me by berating me loudly in the middle of the newsroom- I truly forget what for. It was so loud and unprofessional that an anchor called me in their office afterward pissed at what they had witnessed. I remember getting on the elevator with Peter Dunn one time and nervously trying to strike up a conversation with him. He ignored me. There were clear double standards for other Black employees behind-the-scenes at WCBS too. So much so that after a Black firefighter died fighting a fire at David’s home- some of us Black employees were hopeful it would cause him to start treating us better. It didn’t… After about a year and a half of freelancing, I was told David didn’t feel like ‘stringing me along anymore’ and wouldn’t offer me any more freelance days after the end of the month. I had impressed other managers at WCBS so much so that they- unbeknownst to me- spoke up in my defense and I was called days later and told there was a ‘change of heart.’ By that time, I had also started freelancing at CBS News in the Newspath division and turned the ‘change of heart’ down. Before I left, a manager at WCBS even said to me that they hoped I ‘knew the problem {at WCBS} was never you.’ Those words have stayed in my head ever since and I know what the manager meant.”
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CBS4 reported on the allegations:
