NBC and GE Losing Grip
Slipping from 1st to 4th, NBC
is an underperforming division of an apparent house of cards. Primarily a
financial services company, NBC parent company GE is fighting an SEC
investigation and questions over the magnitude of its burgeoning debt and lack
of transparency to shareholders.
Follow the story in Sunday Times. In April 08,
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt was forced to finally admit the company's financial
frailty as it missed earnings guidance by a wide margin, the first time in
20 years, sending shock waves through global economies. In fact, GE is
reportedly some $500 billion dollars in debt with approximately $18 billion
dollars in tangible assets according to research and analysis by an investment
management source
examining the numbers and public documents for more than a
year, referring to GE as "The Naked Emperor." Charles Ortel of
Newport Value Partners was the first to sound the alarm and accurately identify
GE's current tumbling financial house of cards while also predicting dangerous winds ahead. Additionally, the full breadth and
depth of the financial troubles, apparent fraud and high ranking government
officials allegedly involved has yet to be fully revealed.
In
June '08, JP Morgan's C. Stephen Tusa Jr downgraded GE's stock, predicting a
rough road ahead including problems for NBC.
As a bellwether Dow
component, it has been said as GE goes, so goes the Dow. We can also
add ... and so goes the US financial markets and those around the world. As a diverse multinational company with a
significant exposure in the financial services industry amounting to a huge earnings miss just
weeks after Immelt promised the opposite, questions are being raised by fraud
examiners, attorneys and other interests specializing in corporate fraud as well
as Wall
Street analysts, the financial press, investors, shareholders and employees
concerned about the
company's true financial health and failure to disclose. When Immelt
admitted the earnings miss, former GE Chairman Jack Welch immediately distanced himself from the
deeply ingrained
corporate culture of avoiding culpability that Welch himself created, saying Immelt's comments created a credibility problem for the current GE chief
who was hand-picked, groomed
and trained by Welch.
Is it fraud?
Is it a bigger-than-Enron Enron? The cries for selling underperforming or seemingly incompatible
divisions have returned, including the rumored sale of NBC.
Meanwhile, in answer to
inquiring minds, in the 2005 defamatory article planted by NBC in the NYPost's
Page Six, NBC left out
a few facts the company feared would become public knowledge
via my widely distributed inside-industry private email.
While I was an anchor at that
cable channel, CNBC walked, talked and quacked like GE's very own internal
Tailhook.
I and many others experienced daily, hourly, widespread, tolerated, encouraged
and protected extraordinarily abusive, rude, crude inappropriate jokes
and behavior including on-air references, the off-air physical accosting of a young
assistant and on-set grossly inappropriate gestures. I followed procedure
to address the sickening locker room culture. With two weeks left on my
contract, three weeks after 9/11, I was fired. I immediately sought
counsel.
In the
words of another network executive, NBC engaged in "back office whispers"
and a "wholesale character assassination" to keep me out of work. My
attorney, recommended to me by AFTRA, committed a long list of extraordinarily
inept or corrupt service including failing to file the complaint for 9 months after I left CNBC,
failing to show me the complaint before filing and failing to notify NBC for 30 days after he
filed the complaint and moving his office without telling me. A number of other strange events happened - a witness suddenly
found money for her day spa and disappeared, an 6'5" 300 pound NBC
executive followed me (with the help of a man who ran when I spotted them at 5th
and 59th) and screamed at me on 5th Avenue outside Cipriani's, I was
followed and photographed on my motorcycle, etc etc - a long list of illegal intimidation
tactics
occurred, robbing me of my right to due process. Yet
another network executive later explained "the problem started at the top." While fighting my case, I
found independent reports of a security camera videotape of a top NBC executive
in the parking garage at 30 Rock in a car with the window rolled down with a
prostitute. As I said in the email NBC didn't want you to see, I wouldn't
be surprised if a rape had occurred on the premises of CNBC.
Within days of my email bomb
going out to my industry friends and supporters, a private email I was later told by a
talent
agent that happened to include the 50 most powerful people in the business, before that
email became public, NBC planted a defamatory article in the New York
Post's Page Six discrediting and defaming me. NBC's planted article
skillfully failed to include a
clickable link to my website (where the true facts would soon be posted) and NBC failed to spell out the facts,
charges and nature of the complaint filed in court.
I was in California when I saw the NYPost headline crossing the wires, about midnight
on the West Coast, 3am New York. I had never revealed the gory facts on my website,
preferring to keep such gross, disgusting boys club, locker room details out of public
forum. But as soon as I saw that headline cross on the internet, I knew I had to go public
with the truth. So in the middle of the night, for the first time ever, I posted the breathtaking,
disgusting
facts of CNBC's illegal violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing gender
discrimination, a form of which is sexual harassment, as well as GE's aggressive
illegal tactics to intimidate me, damage my career and reputation, frighten my
family of origin, rob me of my right to due process among other
transgressions.
Their attempt to beat me to
the public punch backfired. Yes, I vomited when NBC published
its extraordinarily and deeply professionally and personally damaging and
defamatory article. But I took pride in the website traffic opportunity to publish
the facts. I had prior and very recently received intimidating emails from
NBC, including one from Bob Wright. I was tired of their
intimidation.
Their NYPost article sent
30,000 visitors to my website in one day, causing it to crash, requiring an
expansion of bandwidth three times by my web hosting company, Network Solutions. The NYPost
article still circulates on the internet, still continues to provide click-throughs to my website
allowing visitors
who read the NYPost trash to also read the details of NBC and GE's federal crimes and harbored criminals.
At that moment, the barroom brawl erupted out into the open, in the print press
all over the world and on my website.
Suddenly, as I walking on the
boardwalk in New Jersey, a business partner called to tell me my website was
dark. When I called Network Solutions to inquire, a company executive told
me there had been "complaints" of "libelous" content on my website.
When this reporter pressed further, the Network Solutions executive admitted
they received ONE complaint from NBC which threatened to sue Network Solutions if the web hoster didn't take down my website.
Network Solutions complied. I explained the information was
not libelous, is protected by the truth, documentation and witnesses and if
Netsol didn't return my website to publication, Network Solutions would face
legal action not just from NBC. After three dark hours, netsol determined
the issue was between me and NBC and returned my website
to publication.
Think about that. In
addition to its other crimes, NBC, home to a then respected news broadcast
division, soliciting, trading,
profiting on the practice of First Amendment, financially benefiting from your trust
to expose truth, crimes and criminals, now committing crimes, attempting to rob
me of my First Amendment rights, robbing me of my right to due process
and blocking my right to free speech.
When the website shutdown
didn't stick, as I continued to publish the
details, my website page outlining the details was hacked and defaced. Every mention of 'CNBC' and 'NBC'
suddenly mysteriously included extra characters, preventing search engine
recognition.
Seems I and the women at CNBC
were not alone. The company is
currently fighting
a $500 million dollar 1500 person class action gender discrimination lawsuit
filed against GE by a high ranking executive. In my case, so many women were
impacted, the
judge said it "speaks to class action status."
In my attempt to seek justice, at least 13 people
who perpetrated, protected or served as accidental witness were transferred, fired or forcibly retired.
NBC so illegally intimidated and harmed my family of origin - events
including the extraordinarily stressful pressure and the death of my father, the frightening of my mother, my cat's theft
and torture - now forced to fight pro se, trying to gain strength after my
father's death and during my mother's immediate needs, I asked the judge to dismiss the case.
Instead, he demanded to see both sides for our regularly scheduled case
management meeting. When I blurted out the details, the judge showed his own outrage over the facts available in an on-air transcript
by sitting back in chair in amazement and clear disgust.
"Are you sure you
want to drop, Miss Behrend?" By then, with my father's recent death, my
mother's needs, my need to work, with NBC's terror and character assassination
campaign, I answered "Yes, I can't win in this arena." (I could then and
now). I decided to move on and win in other areas in my life.
Manifesting what an NBC
executive acknowledged early on as they tried to settle the case for pennies, "we don't need someone
out there like this." He meant they knew they had a hired investigative reporter
against whom they had committed crimes and fired when she blew the whistle.
Their hired now fired gun had a smoking gun and it was now pointed at them. I
am a capital J professional journalist, well-educated as a Kiplinger Fellow,
practiced, skilled and instinctively able to smell a rat, an
employee with whom network executives had already discussed a pending promotion to Dateline,
a take no-shit-someone willing, able and frequently hired to take down criminal
corporate cultures, companies and governments, an employee loaded with
documentation, determination, national and international profile with the goods on
the company. They went for a scorched earth defense and hurt people and
careers for which they have and will pay dearly.
My moral victories continue.
Bob Wright, now mostly gone but still on the payroll, has said he thinks I'll never forgive him. I don't care to.
Executives who knew and arrogantly protected and promoted most of the guilty are
gone. A few of the primary perverts, punks, liars and cheats are still
employed but a bit more careful. NBC and GE and its executives suffered and
are now suffering further for the evil
corporate culture perpetrated under Jack Welch and Bob Wright, drinking buddies
who used to call Sue Herrera while she was on the set at the New York Stock
Exchange and tell her what to report. That's an FCC no no. I suspect the karma Gods got NBC and GE, as seen above,
for the way so many women, investors and employees were treated.
I'd like to look forward not
back. I really don't prefer to continue talking about this but because I am
continually asked due to NBC's defamatory NYPost article still circulating on the
internet, I am forced to keep these facts posted.
Someday when I feel like
telling you everything, reliving the horror NBC exacted on my life and family
in ways that would take your breath away, as a lesson to all in the
workplace, all worker's rights, all women who fight for their rights and the
rights of others, all men and women who value their Civil Rights, men and women
who share the workplace with the opposite
sex, men and women who stand up and speak out to help move the ball down the field for equal rights
for ourselves, our daughters, our sisters and the generations behind us and on
behalf of those who fought before us, I'll
offer you more of the dramatic details with
photographs, transcript and names to be made available here in this space.
In the meantime, let's deal
with here, now and hope of the future. Thank you for your continued warm
support. God Bless You Always - Bonnie -
