When Soledad O'Brien brought one of her "PowHERful" summits for young women to St. Paul's St. Catherine University, I did an interview with the Emmy-winning broadcaster and CEO of Starfish Media. O'Brien is in her third season of "Real Sports" on HBO and her "Matter of Fact TV" show has been renewed for a second season. Matteroffact.tv has all the listings.
Q: Have you ever had a sexual harassment situation like the one Gretchen Carlson described?
A: The industry per se, TV news, is full of many icky people. But I've never had a sexual harassment case or even an experience I was thinking about bringing as a case. I've definitely had experiences where bosses, or people I worked with, were just gross in the way they treated women, generally. I had a guy I worked with who used to tell me how he hired people. He showed me how he'd turn the sound down [on their video] and if he thought they were hot, that's how he made his hiring decisions. He didn't want to hear what you sounded like; he didn't want to hear your voice. If he was attracted to you, then he'd hire you. That's not sexual harassment, but God. So you hire the hot chicks?
Q: How about hostile women?
A: I have found just hostile all of the above. I've had bosses who were horrible who were men and women. I've had more friendships with women in the newsroom, so probably for every horrible female boss, I had 10 really great women who were mentors and advocates and people whose shoulder you could cry on, etc. etc. I don't think the math was way more women were awful bosses than men. I've had a lot of jerky men bosses. First off, there were many fewer women working in executive positions, in my experience. So numbers-wise it was probably the same as horrible guy bosses. I recall many great women who were high above me in the hierarchy who went out of their way to be helpful, and that has always surprised me.
Q: That's probably why you like mentoring people now?
A: I do feel those people had tremendous confidence about how well they were doing. Their life was good so they didn't feel, "I'm not going to share my stuff because I don't want you to take it." [They were more thinking], "My life is good, let me tell you what I've learned. Here are the mistakes I made."
Q: Do you believe the very quotable Donald Trump or his accusers?