“I am Debra Lee:” Former BET CEO on Shaping Black Culture

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, our next guest is known as the godmother of black entertainment, who broke barriers leading black entertainment television networks as CEO. Debra Lee reflects on her time at BET and being a cultural symbol in her new memoir. Here is her conversation with Michel Martin.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Debra Lee, thank you so much for talking with us.

DEBRA LEE, AUTHOR, “I AM DEBRA LEE: A MEMOIR” AND FORMER CHAIRMAN AND CEO, BET NETWORKS: Thank you for having me, Michel. It’s great to see you.

MARTIN: You’ve got this gold-plated resume, you know, Brown undergraduate, Harvard Law School. You know, you’re in Washington, D.C. I’m thinking State Department. I’m thinking Justice Department. I’m thinking white shoe law firm. Not this little cable startup that nobody’s heard of.

LEE: Right.

MARTIN: That had a pay cut no less.

LEE:Right.

MARTIN: So, why did you go to BET to begin with? What was the appeal?

LEE: All right. Let me zoom in on what was happening at the time. I had gone to a big law firm, white shoe law firm, Steptoe and Johnson, as you said, from a clerkship because the Republicans ran office. And I have gone to Kennedy School. I thought government was going to be my career. But when the Republicans took office under Ronald Reagan, I decided I didn’t want to go into a Republican administration. So, I had to make an alternative plan. And then, one day out of the blue, I was having lunch with Bob Johnson from — in the middle of a D.C. cable hearing and he asked me was I interested in coming to BET to start the legal department. And it just sounded amazing. One, I would be general counsel. It was pretty early in my career for me to be a general counsel. Two, I wouldn’t have to move to New York. And three, it was a black owned company, which really meant a lot to me, because I grew up in the segregated south. And even though I didn’t know a lot about BET, I knew it had the potential to be something big.

MARTIN: Could you talk a little bit about what the appeal was for you of working in a black media environment?

LEE: Well, the appeal was that I grew up believing that images are important. Images and media. And when I grew up, there were so few. You know, I tell the story about watching Soul Train once a week. I tell the story about, you know, hopefully seeing the Supremes and the Temptations on — at “Ed Sullivan” or “Julia.” You know, the one sitcom. Over “Amos ‘N’ Andy,” which I barely remember because they were taken off the air for the negative stereotypes they portrayed. So, the idea that there was this 24-hour network that was going to focus only on black images and give our young people something to grow up on in terms of watching all different kinds of people, and that there would be opportunities behind the camera. I mean, that really excited me.

MARTIN: Your book is so rich in sort of creating a picture, painting a picture for us of what it’s like to be a pioneer, you know, on so many levels. It’s a new media world that you are kind of building as you go. What was the best thing about it, being part of all that newness?

LEE: Oh, so many things. Being able to hire young black executives and giving them opportunities they wouldn’t have other places. You know, Bob took a chance on me. I was a five-and-a-half-year associate, not exactly the typical general counsel, but he assumed I could make the leap. So, I applied that same theory to people I hired. OK, maybe you weren’t a CFO at your last company, but you were a treasurer. So, maybe you can make the jump. And we had to do that because there weren’t that many black general counsels or CFOs or COOs out there. So, we had to give people opportunities to show what they could do. You know, the excitement of the shows on the air when they worked, I mean, for a long time, as you well know, we have mostly music videos in the early days. I was pretty, you know, vanilla. There was Aretha Franklin. It was Lionel Richie. It was Earth, Wind and Fire. And then, it turned into hip-hop.

MARTIN: You know, the other thing about the videos too is, remember, people may forget this now that this was also an era in which black artists, some black artists had a really hard time getting played on the other channels like on MTV, for example, and —

LEE: They weren’t allowed at all until Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson started making million dollar, $2 million videos. So, even before hip-hop, you went from kind of a low-quality videos to videos that were like little movies, you know, that artists were paying a lot for, their making their labels, pay a lot for and people were dying to see them. So, people would sit around for 10 videos to see the top video on Video Soul or “106 & Park.” And then, along comes hip-hop, and the images are divisive. There’s gangster rap. We have to block out the videos. There’s, you know, misogynistic images of women. We have to, you know, negotiate with the record labels about that. So, there was this whole transition to what videos really represented in our community, and we have to deal with that. And you know, as tough as it was, it was kind of exciting too because, you know, you feel like — I felt like I had to hand — my hand on pop culture. And then, when we started doing original programming, of course, that brought a whole new texture to the network.

MARTIN: It’s interesting that the debate — the external debate over the representation of women in the videos, in a way, it was kind of a bookend to some of the internal dynamics that you were experiencing, particularly when you became COO. You describe in the book people showing up at your meetings, wearing sunglasses or reading the newspaper while you’re in the middle of a meeting or at one point, you describe a person who clearly thought he should have had your job, disrupting a presentation of yours. How do you understand that now?

LEE: Yes. Well, the last person you spoke of literally switched up the slides on me and I was making a presentation to analysts. So, nothing I was saying was matching the screen behind me. And when I realized that, I kind of just fell apart. You know, I’m like, oh, my god. What happened? But it was something I never expected. I knew there would be some resistance because so many of the men at the company thought — had asked for the job. But the resistance was much more than I expected. I assume that people are unhappy, they would leave and we would work out a nice settlement agreement, but I didn’t expect people to be so noticeably hostel. And that was hard to deal with. I hated going to my own senior team meetings. So, it was very unsettling time and, you know, it’s hard to deal with. But eventually, I think I say in the book, it took me like six years to get my own team in place.

MARTIN: One of the things that you talk about is how many people would say, thank you for what you’re doing for the culture, you know. And that you have to come to grips with — you weren’t just an executive, you were also a cultural symbol to a lot of people. It wasn’t just a job, it’s what the job meant.

LEE: Right.

MARTIN: Could you talk a little bit more about that?

LEE: You know, I had lunch with someone the other day who is a friend who is in the record industry for years, and he told me his feeling was, anyone who was CEO of BET was, in essence, the president of black America. And I never thought of it that way, but there was some of that in that. You know, you’re a leader, whether you want to be a leader or not, and not just of your company, but because BET was so visible and was one of so few successful black companies around, you know, you’re forced into a different leadership role.

MARTIN: Like how so?

LEE: Like getting to know the Obamas during the campaign. You know, we were doing a get out the vote campaign but I never wanted BET to tell people who to vote for. That was not BET’s role. We had a news division. On the other hand, personally, I could get to know the Obama and support them financially and any other way I could. And when they came to the White House, I was invited to speak as in a room of 12 CEOs, to be part of his presidential management board where we looked at the government in general and gave him lessons and things to do. You know, we looked — overlooked the computer system, the personnel system, how you promote people. So, you know, those kinds of opportunities only became — only came to me because I was CEO of BET.

MARTIN: But it’s also true that you talk about just, you know, not like presidents and other CEOs, but like waiters at restaurant —

LEE: Right.

MARTIN: — would kind of whisper in your ear, thank you for what you’re doing for the culture —

LEE: Right. Yes.

MARTIN: — which you know, had to feel great. On the other hand, flipping over to the kind of the paying points. On the other hand, when people became infuriated, some, at the content on BET, you heard about it.

LEE: Right. In front of my house.

MARTIN: But that leads me to another — obviously, one of the other paying points is the relationship that developed with the BET founder Bob Johnson after — this started about a decade after you were with the company, and six months after, you were appointed to COO. I’m pointing out that timeline because, obviously, you know, the implication is that you’ve got those positions because you were in a relationship, and I just want to point out that it was the opposite, that relationships, in your accounting, started long after you had been with the company, and you were both married at the time. The way you describe it in the book is actually fairly painful. You describe it as consensual. But one is left to wonder whether it really was.

LEE: Right.

MARTIN: And I — especially when you try to end it in your recounting, you describe some very disturbing behavior. Is it — that behavior that I might describe as stalking behavior that other people might describe as harassment. And clearly, you describe this for lots of reasons as part of an object lesson you want other young women to know that this is something that happened.

LEE: Right.

MARTIN: But what is it that you want us to know? How do you want us to think about this?

LEE: Well, after a lot of thinking and a lot of work with a therapist and Time’s Up and MeToo, I realized that it may well not have been consensual, mainly because he — Bob always had power over me as my boss. And you know, he didn’t force himself on me. It was a period of, you know, trying to convince me to have a relationship, but it wasn’t, you know, a forced relationship But when I think about it, and I think about my decision making about whether to have the relationship, you know, my job entered into it. You know, I’m like, OK, if I turned this man down, what’s going to happen tomorrow, you know? Do we just go back to work and he says, oh, OK, no problem? You know, we’re good. Or does it mean I have to leave the company. But anyway, so, I did make the decision to have the relationship that lasted several years. And at times, it felt like a relationship. In that, you know, we both got divorced, you know, it — we had fun. It was, you know, not always about harassment or being forced to do anything. But then, when I decided that this wasn’t a long-term relationship and that we didn’t have the same values, and that’s what I remember basing the decision on, and I started trying to get out of it, then the comment was made to me, well, you know, if you — if we break up, you have to leave the company. And so, then, that turned into, as you said, a very dark period. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to. I started going to a therapist trying to figure out how to get out of this and how I got into it, and just, you know, what had happened. And it was painful. It was painful. And I even said to Bob at certain times, you know, what you’re saying to me is sexual harassment. And he said, oh, no. That’s not — that doesn’t apply to us. And I was like, yes, it does. If you work for someone and they say this relationship is pretty — your job or your career is premised on this relationship, that’s sexual harassment. And then, it went so much further than that, not even just leaving BET, but I had to wonder what my next options we’re going to be. You know, when you’ve tied your career to one person, which I had. I mean, BET was Bob. Bob is BET. So, OK, you leave. And then, what’s the recommendation going to look like? What are people going to think? You know, what does that do to my livelihood? So, you know, a lot of considerations. And the reason I wanted to write the book is to let young women know that, you know, there are different kinds of harassment, different kinds of abuse. And if you put yourself in this situation, you know, you should be aware of this.

MARTIN: How do you feel now that you shared all this and that you’ve put it out there?

LEE: Well to be honest, I feel lighter. I feel like there was this part of my career that I can never talk about with anyone, even close friends. You know, a lot of my friends had a good relationship with Bob. I mean, he’s a very charming guy. People in my family had good relationships with Bob. So, you know, it wasn’t like I could go around telling everyone, oh, wait a minute. Back up. He’s not the person that you’re seeing. And so, I feel that the first day this book came out, I felt lighter, that I was glad I had told the story. I knew I would get some criticism, and that’s fine. But it’s my story. There’s been a lot of supporters and there will be criticism, but I really felt like this was something I had to do.

MARTIN: What criticism? What has been the criticism, if any?

LEE: Well, you know, people say, oh, you had an affair. And I’m like, yes, I did. And, you know, I’m not proud of that. Or, you know, you were sleeping with a married man, there has been some of that on Twitter. Or you slept your way to the top, which, you know, I assume some people would say. But, you know, when we did tell Vicom about the relationship, they were the parent company, they changed my reporting requirements so that Bob couldn’t give me or take away from me anything based on the relationship But we still had to coexist and we still had to travel together and do deals together.

MARTIN: Have you heard from the other party since you have published that book?

LEE: No.

MARTIN: No, never?

LEE: No.

MARTIN: We reached out to Mr. Johnson for comment, he has not commented to us.

LEE: Yes.

MARTIN: Well, thank you for talking with us about it. And I — if — I can tell that it isn’t easy even now.

LEE: Yes.

MARTIN: Debra Lee, thank you so much for talking with us today.

LEE: Thank you, Michel. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.