#discovery communications

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian Substack:

In early July, Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO David Zaslav dodged a bullet. A devastating piece in GQ about Zaslav’s handling of WBD’s entertainment properties—essentially, the Warner Bros. half of the merger between WarnerMedia and Zaslav’s Discovery, Inc. last year—was significantly watered down after one of WBD’s public relations people complained about it. The author, Jason Bailey, objected to the edited piece and demanded that his byline be removed, forcing GQ to delete the article altogether. Bailey adamantly denied that the article contained the “numerous inaccuracies” that WBD claimed it contained—but didn’t help his cause by admitting that he never sought comment from anyone at the company. But if there’s any real justice, Zaslav ought to be facing scrutiny for issues more fundamental than his handling of the Warner Bros. half of his newly minted media conglomerate. Specifically, he and a lot of other people from the Discovery half of the merger have a lot of explaining to do about how the Discovery half of the company vetted America’s most infamous babymakers and unfit parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. The failure is such that a lot of people need to lose their jobs—starting with Zaslav.

A little over the month after the release of the Amazon Prime docuseries “Shiny Happy People,” it is clear beyond any doubt that Jim Bob and Michelle pulled a fast one on this country for the better part of two decades. They led us to believe that they were the leaders of a very large, very quirky, and very conservative Christian family. But in truth, they subjected their 19 children to an environment of retrograde views on gender and sex, reinforced by heavy-handed discipline to the point of abuse. And of course, they not only failed to do what they were morally and legally required to do when their eldest son, Josh, molested several girls—including his own sisters—as a teenager. And yet, I can only agree with Friday Things founder and editor-in-chief Stacy Lee Kong—as devastating as “Shiny Happy People” was, it feels incomplete. After all, it doesn’t really address what Kong rightly describes as “the central failing” of Discovery and its subsidiary TLC. Namely, turning a blind eye to the numerous red flags about this family. [...]

Moreover, it proves beyond any doubt that Discovery had no qualms about dealing with the Duggars even after Josh’s misdeeds came to light. By the summer of 2015, Discovery was well aware that the Duggars had endured the equivalent of a five-alarm fire in 2002 and 2003—and even after all of that, Jim Bob had no qualms about bringing cameras into his home for the sake of “ministry.” Granted, it wasn’t definitively confirmed until former Duggar family friend Bobye Holt testified about it on the fourth day of Josh’s trial for possessing and receiving child sex abuse material. But the timeline is almost comically easy to put together.

What neither Kong nor Vanity Fair’s Eve Batey point out is that even if no one was willing to speak on the record, there was certainly enough to question why TLC and Discovery glossed over something that should have kiboshed any dealings with them in the first place. When the nation first discovered the Duggars (the pun was intended), they were living in a three-bed, two-bath house in Springdale, Arkansas. An article that ran in Inquisitr three months after Josh’s depravities came to light revealed that the Duggars had lived there since 1993, when Jim Bob and Michelle already had five kids. Nine more were born in the decade between the Duggars moved in and Parents magazine ran a feature on them in September 2003, and two more were added in the two years that Discovery Health filmed two specials about them.

Rather than ask why 16 to 18 people were crammed into a house designed for six people, the Discovery Health specials appeared to gloss over the logistical nightmares that ensued. In one show, Josh mentioned that there wasn’t nearly enough space for the kids to have their own beds—and there is footage of boys and girls sleeping in the same beds. The kids had to take showers in shifts; some on Monday, the others on Tuesday. Even then, the water heater wasn’t enough to handle the sheer amount of dishwashing, laundry, and diaper changing needed to care for such a large family. This situation was not just unsafe and unsanitary. It was also grossly unlawful. Springdale, like nearly all decent-sized cities, has occupancy limits written into all residential building permits. They spell out the maximum number of people who can live in a house, as well as the minimum square footage for each occupant of a bedroom. As licensed real estate professionals, Jim Bob and Michelle almost certainly knew it was illegal.

Compounding the problem, Jim Bob and Michelle had the means to get more adequate housing. Besides their real estate investments, Jim Bob plunked down $250,000 in cash to challenge Tim Hutchinson in the 2002 Republican primary for U. S. Senate. That was more than enough to get a decent-sized house in that part of Arkansas at the time. All told, Jim Bob and Michelle’s willful failure to get better housing for their family met the legal definition of child neglect in Arkansas. While the Duggars were already planning their current mansion in Tonitown by 2000, they didn’t move there until 2006. The fact that the Duggars considered that house in Springdale acceptable as even a temporary solution, especially after Josh’s misdeeds, is beyond comprehension. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a shame that Inquisitr piece didn’t get much traction. After all, it proved not just beyond reasonable doubt, but ALL doubt, that Jim Bob and Michelle were manifestly unfit parents. Moreover, it robbed them of a defense for dragging their feet in reporting Josh’s molestation. There is no way that they could not have known that having boys and girls sleep in the same bed created a situation where improper touching could happen.

[...] Discovery’s failures were compounded by the event that ultimately led to the Duggar charade being exposed. In 2006, they were slated to appear on Oprah Winfrey when someone emailed a staffer at Oprah’s production company, Harpo Productions. The email not only outlined Josh’s molestation, but also revealed Jim Bob and Michelle covered it up. Harpo made the only acceptable decision—it sent the information to a child abuse tipline and sent the Duggars packing. Within mere hours of being alerted by Harpo, the Arkansas State Police called Michelle and told him that she needed to bring Josh in, and she needed to bring him in right now.

Darrell Lucus lays out the case on Discovery Communications' negligence allowed the Duggars to gain fame in an unethical manner.

Harpo Productions, however, rightly put the kibosh on the Duggars appearing on the now-cancelled The Oprah Winfrey Show due to their staff doing their due diligence on the backgrounds of the Duggars, as they were scheduled to appear on the show in 2006.