Two execs exit CBS after accusations of racist, sexist behavior involving Philly’s CBS3 and other stations

Two CBS executives who allegedly engaged in racist, sexist, and homophobic conduct in their management of stations that included Philadelphia’s CBS3 are no longer with the company, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. The paper cited a memo sent to staff by the company’s chief executive, George Cheeks.

The allegations against Peter Dunn, formerly president of the CBS Television Stations, and David Friend, former senior vice president, news, for the stations group, were raised in a Jan. 24 Los Angeles Times report and included mentions of disparaging remarks Dunn was said to have made about longtime CBS3 anchor Ukee Washington.

“While CBS has stated it has terminated Peter, it is not for-cause, and they continue to pay him under his contract,” said Larry Hutcher, an attorney for Dunn, in a statement to The Inquirer. “Peter has a strong record of hiring and promoting professionals of diverse backgrounds and has been a champion of women and men of color throughout the organization. We are confident that the investigation will exonerate Peter and are prepared to fully cooperate, but the opportunity to do so has not yet occurred.”

Dunn and Friend had been put on administrative leave on the day following the Times’ story, and on Jan. 29, the paper reported that Proskauer Rose, a law firm, had been hired to investigate the allegations against Dunn and Friend. The paper also reported that both men had previously denied the allegations.

CBS3 was one of the stations where, the Times reported, the two white executives were alleged to have “cultivated a hostile work environment that included bullying female managers and blocking efforts to hire and retain Black journalists.” Dunn, a former CBS3 general manager, was also alleged to have described Washington as “just a jive guy.”

The report triggered an outpouring of support for the popular anchor, who joined KYW in 1986 as a sports anchor, moving to news 10 years later. He grew up in West Philadelphia and traveled the world as a member of the Philadelphia Boys Choir.

“I want to thank everyone for the love and support over the past couple of days,” Washington said during a Jan. 26 newscast. “I’m good. Keeping the faith. Staying strong, and I want all of you to do the same. I feel your love, and we all feel the pain of the subject matter.”

Margaret Cronan, a former CBS3 vice president of news, and Brien Kennedy, the station’s general manager from 2015 to July 2019, were among the named sources for the Times’ story.

Cronan, who is white, had been brought in by Kennedy to run the news operation. She left the station in July 2017. “I just could not tolerate the culture anymore,” she said in an interview with The Inquirer in January in which she expressed hope that “we will see change and we will see workplaces that are no longer racist, discriminatory, and downright offensive.”

Cronan had also told the Times that in a discussion about revamping the station’s morning newscast, Dunn had asked if one prospective anchor was “too gay for Philadelphia.”

It appeared to be a reference to Jim Donovan, who joined the station as a consumer reporter in early 2004 and began anchoring the morning newscast in April 2016.

In an interview with Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, Donovan said that his “first reaction was that I did chuckle a little bit because I thought, ‘What does too gay mean?’”

He stressed that the remark had allegedly come from an executive in New York, not in Philadelphia.

“Look, I know that being openly gay probably closed some doors for me,” Donovan told Segal. “I know that some people may have had reservations about hiring me, but fortunately my work stood for itself and I got the jobs. I got this job here … and then I was promoted to the anchor desk.”

Kennedy, who is also white, is now the general manager of WIVB, a Nexstar Media Group-owned CBS affiliate in Buffalo. He filed a complaint a year ago with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, alleging that he was fired at CBS3 not, as Dunn had said, for poor performance but as retaliation for talking with a company lawyer about Dunn’s management.

It was Kennedy who, shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia from Minneapolis, moved Washington from mornings to replace Chris May as coanchor of the 5, 6, and 11 p.m. newscasts on CBS3 and the 10 p.m. newscast on CW57 as part of a shake-up at the station that included the exits of May, sports director Beasley Reece, and chief meteorologist Kathy Orr.

Looking at research that had been done shortly before his arrival, “I realized that Ukee needed to be the face of the station. He was really the best person we had on the team at the time to lead us through the change,” Kennedy said in an interview with The Inquirer in January. Beyond that, “I was uncomfortable with our level of diversity at the station,” with the evening newscasts then being led by two white anchors, May and Jessica Dean.

Dunn, who had worked with Washington at CBS3, approved the Black anchor’s promotion to evenings, Kennedy told the Times, but also “frequently disparaged Washington, calling him ‘just a jive guy,’ " and complained that “all he does is dance.”

After meeting with CBS officials after the Times report, the National Association of Black Journalists had called for Dunn and Friend to be fired.

Ernest Owens, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and editor at large at Philadelphia Magazine, said in an interview in January that the two executives’ firing shouldn’t be the end.

“This is a situation I know has been happening for a very long time,” Owens said.

“What we have to understand is that the people who tolerate, or are complicit with that kind of behavior, they still linger in those newsrooms,” he said. “We have to work to enforce anti-oppression training, and other … measures and policies that will protect Black employees in those places.”

That said, he noted that there have been leadership changes at CBS3 since the incidents referred to in the Times’ story. Manny Smith, a past president of PABJ, is now CBS3′s managing editor, and Brandin Stewart, who is Black, has been general manager of CBS3 and CW57 since August 2019.

This story has been updated to include a statement from Peter Dunn’s lawyer.