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Amanpour
"She Said," New Book Behind the Original Reporting of Two Journalists; Jodi Kantor, Co-Author, "She Said," and Megan Twohey, Co- Author, "She Said," are Interviewed About Their New Book, "She Said"; #MeToo Movement Battle for Women's Equal Pay; British Government Forces Large Companies to Reveal Gender Pay Gap; Carrie Gracie, Author, "Equal: A Story of Women, Man and Money," is Interviewed About Equal Pay. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired December 26, 2019 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." This Holiday Season, we're dipping into the
archives and looking back at some of our favorite interviews from the year. So, here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JODI KANTOR, CO-AUTHOR, "SHE SAID": We're bringing you there into the room as we're having our final confrontation with Harvey Weinstein.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: The journalists who brought down Harvey Weinstein join us with their new book. "She Said" takes us behind the scenes that sparked a
global revolution against sexual assault.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Another journalist battles the social change and justice. The BBC's Carrie Gracie and her brave fight for equal pay for women.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad, over the phone, said to me, please, please, just survive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Eighteen years since 9/11. How the tragedy has impacted the children near ground zero.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
We live in a changed world. It is hard to imagine that two years ago the #MeToo movement in its current globe spanning form did not exist. Since
its arrival, we've transformed the way we talk about sexual assault and crucially, about believing women who say they are victims.
In large part, the fuel for this change came from two women, two journalists, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, of the "New York Times." Their
expose on Hollywood megaproducer, Harvey Weinstein, in 2017 won them the Pulitzer prize for public service.
More than 80 women have now come forward with allegations against him. He denies all the charges of nonconsensual sex. Kantor and Twohey's new book
is called "She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement." And it takes us behind the reporting that led us to
this point.
They join me from New York to talk about their meticulous forensic approach.
Jodi and Megan, welcome to the program.
JODI KANTOR, CO-AUTHOR, "SHE SAID": Thank you so much.
MEGAN TWOHEY, CO-AUTHOR, "SHE SAID": Thank you.
AMANPOUR: So, this book has received amazing reviews. Its published into an atmosphere where your reporting has already essentially created a
movement. It's a very, very fertile time to have more of this story. But is this more of the story or is this a different look of what you have
found? Why did you decide to write the book about the original reporting?
TWOHEY: Well, we realized that our first Weinstein article in 2017 was actually just the beginning. And while we had been able to connect some of
the dots to show Harvey's alleged predation going back over the decades and how he was able to cover it up, we really spent the last two years pulling
the curtain back on the machinery that was in place to silence the women who he thought might go public with allegations and also to push into the
question of complicity.
You know, this applies not just in the case of Weinstein but across workplaces throughout America and beyond, which is when people get glimpses
of wrong doing, what do they do? What steps do people take to try to intervene? And how do people become complicit in abuse?
AMANPOUR: So, before we dig down into those aspects, which are vital. Because this is, after all, a work of journalism, it's investigative but
it's journalism. And journalism, as you know, is under enormous strain right now, even in the United States. And yet, journalism is what is
causing reform.
So, Jodi, I want to know from you whether that was a part of your thinking when you wrote. Did you have to feel that you had to put down the rigorous
investigation and fact checking and double checking that you did as journalists to bring this story of alleged criminality to bear?
KANTOR: Absolutely. In part, because #MeToo has come to mean so much to so many people. We did not expect this to sweep around the globe. We did
not expect our reporting to have the impact it did. And so, we're trying to bring you back now to the original events. The book is filled with some
of the notes from the first conversations with actresses and we're bringing you there into the room as we're having our final confrontation with Harvey
Weinstein over a speakerphone in the offices of the "New York Times" because we want you to see the original material.
And as you say, some of that is about showing our work. What we have lived through and what we believe is that when facts are rigorously documented,
they can serve as a powerful platform for social change. And so, we want to show how that happened.
AMANPOUR: So, let's start from the beginning, then. How did you two journalists, who were not Hollywood journalists, you're not West Coast
based journalists, how did you penetrate the difficult and private world of high-profile celebrities?
[13:05:00]
TWOHEY: Well, that's a -- I mean, that's a great question. Jodi and I are not -- we don't cover Hollywood. We don't cover the entertainment
industry. We're investigative journalists. So, we quickly realized we'd sit at our desks saying, how are we going to get in touch with Uma Thurman,
how are we going to get in touch with Gwyneth Paltrow, how are we going to get in touch with Angelina Jolie?
I mean, trying to obtain those phone numbers were almost investigations unto themselves. And so, you know, luckily, there were concerned folks
spread throughout the entertainment industry who had been very concerned about Harvey Weinstein's behavior over the years and were able to sort of
step in and start to serve as a private switchboard for information, key contact information.
AMANPOUR: It really does sound like a network for revealing this and for change. But let me ask you, because Ashley Judd, I think, was the person
who broke the dam. She actually called you somehow knowing that you were seeking this information.
And I just want to read a little passage from the book describing your reaction. She called you to say she's prepared to be named as a source.
And she says, standing amid the neat lines of glass wall and gray carpet, Jodi lost it, like a marathoner collapsing at the finish line. She and
Megan had spent months living in a state of suspense and responsibility. They would land the story or they would blow it. They would get actresses
on the record or they would not. Weeping, Jodi surged for something to say to Judd that was equal to the moment but still professional. The best she
could muster was, this means the world to me as a journalist.
So, take us back to that moment and how emotional it was for you to realize that now you actually had something to build this on.
KANTOR: Well, we had been working on this for so many months. And I had first contacted Ashley Judd in June of 2017 and we had a private
conversation about what had happened with Harvey Weinstein. And all summer with, really, not that many actresses would pick up the phone but the ones
who did, and the ones who had stories, we were slowly trying to convince them to go on the record, and it was so difficult.
And at the moment, you just described, the -- Hollywood's silence about Harvey Weinstein had held until that moment. People like Rose McGowan, for
instance, had tweeted about her allegations but she hadn't named him. And so, when Ashley said she was willing to go on the record, it felt like
finally, finally these decades of silence are going to end. And I think for us, it was the first time I thought this story is going to work.
AMANPOUR: And you mentioned Gwyneth Paltrow earlier. So, I was really surprised, actually, by the detail that now you reveal about how helpful
Gwyneth was. Because she, obviously, had also made her accusations. We know she was one of Harvey's biggest stars and she didn't go on the record
at first. But she was helpful to you in finding other victims.
So, again, from your book, Paltrow was on vacation with her children in Europe and her social media feed showed wine glasses, a picnic, and an
Italian lake. Privately, she was also texting old co-stars and acquaintances for so and so's contact information, asking other women if
they would speak. I mean, that is like a co-investigator for you.
TWOHEY: It was, indeed, like a co-investigator. You know, there was a moment when we were actually in one of Gwyneth Paltrow's homes interviewing
her and collecting information about her particular allegation. And she actually even stepped aside, she sort of walked out to the lawn and started
fielding phone calls from other women, other actresses that she had called to say, you know, do you have a story you can share? And so, we really
can't emphasize enough what a critical role she played in this investigation.
And we also realized, if Harvey Weinstein's biggest star had been a victim of predation. You know, there must have been countless of other women.
And so, it also provided a new sense of urgency to the investigation. We suspected that nobody was immune.
AMANPOUR: And in fact, you did sort of coin a term. It was -- you called it the, the pattern. You began to hear the same almost identical story
from all the women who you were talking to and about.
But first, let me read you, because, obviously, Harvey Weinstein's lawyer has their own reactions. And about Gwyneth, she says, Gwyneth Paltrow
comes from Hollywood royalty. Her father was a top producer, her mother a famous actor. Her god father is Stephen Spielberg. She didn't need to
make movies with Harvey Weinstein, she wanted to. And she won top awards and was the top paid female actor for nearly a decade with Weinstein. Her
narrative of her job being at stake is gratuitous and absurd.
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And as you know, this lawyer, Donna Rotunno, has told CNN that she says your book is one sided, contained one-sided allegations, inadequately
investigating the facts of each situation. There's a different side to every story. So, clearly Harvey Weinstein's lawyers are putting his case.
But were you surprised that Gwyneth also, given her pedigree, had been put into this situation, according to her?
KANTOR: Well, actually, I think that Weinstein statement gets at something important that we would like to explain, which is that what we found,
Weinstein's signature was, in his alleged predation was the use of work as a form of pressure. The common denominator here, whether we're talking
about young assistants or whether we're talking about actresses is that these were women with aspirations, ambitions, dreams.
And he would meet with them and they -- the way they explain it, they wanted to work. They wanted opportunity. And that he appears to have
wanted something else from them. So, the essence of the Gwyneth story is not just about the fact that she says he ended a business meeting at the
Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills by placing hands on her and saying, let's finish this in the bedroom.
The point is, she had been cast in the movie "Emma," which was a star making role. It was a great part. But it hadn't been filmed yet. And
after Brad Pitt, her boyfriend at the time, confronted Weinstein, Weinstein called Gwyneth, according to her, and said, you're going to ruin
everything. You're going to screw up your whole career. And she thought she was going to be fired. So, that threat that if you don't go along with
him, you will lose work is very much at the heart of this story.
AMANPOUR: One of the big revelations in your book is who you call or one could call your deep throat. He was an insider Irwin Writer. Tell me his
significance and how he beat the system, if you like, his own, you know, workplace code of silence to give you vital information.
TWOHEY: Irwin Writer was, in fact, sort of the deep throat figure in our investigation. This was Harvey Weinstein's accountant of decades. He had
worked within his two companies Miramax and was working at the Weinstein company. When Jodi first approached him, and it was a little bit of a
risk. I mean, why would the accountant want to kind of turn on the boss and give us information? But in fact, it turned out that he did.
This was somebody who had worked by Harvey's side for years and had become increasingly concerned about his treatment of women. He had tried to make
some moves within the company to try to sort of hold him accountable and do something about it, all those efforts had failed.
So, actually, when Jodi came knocking, he was actually willing to go where so many other people weren't. And so, in touched meetings, in sort of
confidential meetings, in dark -- you know, in dark restaurants, he slowly started to provide information and ultimately, internal company record that
proved crucial.
KANTOR: So, at the point at which I contacted him, and I didn't know this at the time, but when I'm calling him on the phone in September of 2017, I
didn't know it but I was calling a person who been so frustrated, who had tried so hard to address this. And so, that is what motivated him to slip
us some information because I think for him it was a kind of last resort.
TWOHEY: The record he slipped was remarkable. It was -- there was a junior executive at the company, Lauren O'Connor, who was one of the most
remarkable figures in the whole Weinstein story. She had done something that so few people in Weinstein's orbit ever had the courage to do. She
documented and submitted to HR all of the alleged sexual harassment and abuse that she had seen Weinstein engage in.
We had been tracking allegations that stretched back to 1990, and we received this crucial internal memo from 2015. We realized that this
alleged predation was continuing to go on and if we weren't able to publish our story, you know, that other people would likely get hurt.
AMANPOUR: Tell me what you told them. You basically, I suppose, cajoled them in the truest possible way with what this story could do, not
necessarily for them but others.
KANTOR: Well, we did two things. We did -- our pitch to victims always is, we can't change what happened to you in the past, but if we work
together, we may be able to turn this pain to some sort of constructive purpose. But also, in order to persuade, say, Ashley Judd to go on the
record, what we were doing throughout that investigation was trying to build a mountain of evidence.
[13:15:00]
That first story only had two women on the record, Ashley Judd and Laura Madden, a former assistant. She now lives in Wales. She hasn't been given
that much credit, I think, for her incredible bravery. And what we were trying to do was back them up with company records, with the legal and
financial trail of these settlements with the Lauren O'Connor memo, with quotes from other former Weinstein employees saying, hey, yes, I can now
say that this was really a big problem when I worked for Weinstein.
And so, the idea was not -- we didn't want to write a he said/she said story that would cause a debate about whether or not Harvey Weinstein had a
problem, we wanted to publish a story. Once we understood the material, we wanted to publish a story that was overwhelming in its evidence, that even
if we couldn't say exactly what had happened in every instance, there were 25 years' worth of very serious complaints and 25 years of cover up.
AMANPOUR: Let me just ask you, because it's very important that you have pretty unprecedented access to Harvey Weinstein's brother, Bob. And he
showed you letters that he had written to Harvey Weinstein, his brother, about this behavior. He says to you that he thought he was just suffering
from a sex addiction and didn't know it was in -- you know, that the allegations that had come forth since.
You print a letter that Bob wrote. He says, and this is according to your book, you have always minimized your behavior or misbehavior, always
denigrated the other parties involved in some way as to deflect the fact of your own misdeeds. This always made me sad and angry that you could not or
would not acknowledge your own part. So, slowly, I've watched you get worse over the years to the point where from my point of view, there' is no
more personal Brother Harvey that I can recognize but merely an empty soul acting out in any way that he can to fill up that space and hurt that will
not go away.
Why did he want to talk to you? What do you make of what he said? Do you think he knew what was doing? What his brother was doing?
TWOHEY: Well, this is one of the most pressing questions that we had coming out of our initial Weinstein story. This is his brother, his only
siblings and his business partner. They ran two companies, Miramax and the Weinstein company, for decades during the time that Harvey was engaged in
his alleged predation. What did bob know, when did he know it and what did he try to do about it?
And so, eventually last year after kind of refusing to talk to us, there was a moment where Bob agreed to meet me at a diner here in Manhattan and
slowly started to open up about what he saw and what his perspective was. And, listen, he acknowledges that he was aware of allegations of sexual
misconduct against his brother.
In a couple of cases, he even provided money that was used to silence the women. But he also, like so many other people who got glimpses of his
problem -- this problem, believed Harvey when he claimed that this was extramarital affairs and philandering and nothing more and that the women
who came forward were just shake down artists, and that this was actually that -- his perspective on this as being a problem of sex addiction was
actually rooted in his own battles with and recovery from substance abuse.
Now, we reproduced that letter that Bob wrote to Harvey in 2015, every single word of it, because we want readers to see for themselves that when
he's writing about and pleading with his brother to get treatment for his misbehavior, what he really means and we want readers to contemplate the
question of, when you get glimpses of a problem, what do you do about it? How do people become complicit?
AMANPOUR: Well, you know, this leads us to the -- I guess, the final big piece of this whole investigation and the social impact of it and you
alluded to that at the beginning, that a big part of your reportage now is about the machinery of silence around a figure like Harvey Weinstein. It
wasn't just the actresses and the celebrities who were targeted, but its assistants who are either targeted or complicit. It's a whole range of
publicists and lawyers even and the rest.
There's nondisclosure agreements. There's a woman called Rowena Chiu. She was one of the assistants. You tracked her down. You actually went to her
house. You talked to her husband. He had no idea about her nondisclosure agreement which she had signed in 1998. And just this week, I guess, as
your book has been coming out, she was on television describing her situation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROWENA CHIU, ACCUSES WEINSTEIN OF ATTEMPTED RAPE: It was very typical of working with Harvey that generally personal questions and requests massage
and so on are blended in with conversations about scripts and, you know, appropriate workplace questions.
On this particular evening, he's a very big guy, he pushed me back against the bed and I was petrified and terrified as he tried to rape me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Well, that's the story and we have to say that Harvey Weinstein's lawyer has said that Rowena Chiu worked for two years after
this alleged incident and had a warm working relationship with Harvey Weinstein.
[13:20:00]
But, you know, she's told her story on television and she's told her story to you.
I want to get to the heart of some of the really unpalatable stuff about this and that is, some of the lawyers who have been consistently defending
Harvey Weinstein, paid millions and millions of dollars to do this, trying to silence, even female lawyers, trying to silence and cast doubt, more
than doubt, against the female complainers, Lisa Bloom, the daughter of Gloria Allred. She represented Harvey. And you have obtained, I mean,
just the most incredible letters that she wrote about her strategy, including trying to dismiss various accusers as pathological liars,
planting stories that would make anybody who Google their name see those stories first.
But especially, she says this to Harvey Weinstein, according to her letter, you and I come out publicly in a preemptive interview where you talk about
evolving on women's issues prompted by death of your mother, Trump, pussy grab tape and maybe nasty unfounded hurtful rumors about you. You should
be the hero of the story, not the villain. This is very doable.
Now, she since apologized but it just goes to show that there were so many people involved in this, I guess, alleged cover up.
KANTOR: There really were. And I think you're touching on so many different aspects of it. First of all, we just see that the role of the
law and lawyers is so troubling in this material because we do -- even though we know that people service defense lawyers, we ultimately think of
the law as the arbiter of what is right and wrong in our society. And throughout this reporting, we have found that the law, again and again, is
often used to protect the accused and not vulnerable alleged victims.
And when it comes to Bloom, I think you're also seeing part of what is powerful about that memo is that I think it communicates the kind of
gravitational attraction to Weinstein, especially through the movie business. Part of Lisa Bloom's relationship with him is that he had
optioned a book of hers along with Jay-Z that he was working on. And she is not the only figure who behaves that way.
David Boyd is really actually an even more esteemed lawyer than Lisa Bloom, who was Weinstein's lawyer for 15 years, again and again was involved in
covering up information, pushing people to look the other way, minimizing what happened. And he actually wanted to be in the movie business as well.
And even his daughter was an aspiring actress and Weinstein even arranged roles for her to be -- she was in one of his films.
AMANPOUR: Thank you so much for that incredible work of investigative journalism. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, thank you very much indeed.
"She Said" is the book.
KANTOR: Thank you so much.
TWOHEY: Thank you so much.
AMANPOUR: And a book that is really reshaped the landscape.
Now the #MeToo uproar landed in the midst of another long-fought battle for women and that is equal pay. And journalists are on the cutting edge of
that drive for reform too. This topic blew wide open here in the U.K. when BBC broadcaster and China editor, Carrie Gracie, took her employer to task
after she discovered that she was earning half of what her male colleagues did in the same position.
Her bold fight came as the British government was forcing large companies to reveal their gender pay gap, which opened up conversations about women's
value in the workplace. Carrie Gracie joined me to talk about her new book, "Equal," and offered advice to women across the globe fighting to be
heard and paid equally.
Carrie Gracie, welcome to the program.
CARRIE GRACIE, AUTHOR, "EQUAL: A STORY OF WOMEN, MAN AND MONEY": Thank you. It's so great to be here.
AMANPOUR: So, equal justice is obviously our focus today. I want to ask you about your battle for equal pay. It started in 2017. In fact, a few
months before our two journalists Jodi and Megan broke the #MeToo story about Harvey Weinstein. Do you see it sort of as part and parcel of kind
of similar struggle?
GRACIE: Definitely. I think that there are so many similarities. And I would say I and many others in the equal pay fight were inspired by
everyone in the #MeToo fight.
Two things to really hone in on, though, one is the silence breaking that caused #MeToo, obviously, the silence break showed enormous courage to defy
their nondisclosure agreements and to call out some of the men involved. And that, also, plus the equal pay struggle. Because typically, what
happens in this game is that if women are so difficult and determined and stubborn enough to actually fight all the way for equal pay, they will get
closed down on the threshold of an employment tribunal, so it never goes public, and they will be forced to sign or they would feel forced to sign a
nondisclosure agreement or some form of confidentiality agreement.
[13:25:00]
And that way, the general public and the rest of the work force in that workplace never know the facts of life and women are at risk without
knowing it. So, that's one thing. The signage breaking is one thing. And the other thing is the patent building. Because I felt with this -- I
don't know what you thought, but with #MeToo, I thought it was incredible to see all these women in workplaces, big and small, women at the bottom of
the pay scale, women at the top of the pay scale, countries all over the world, basically having almost identical experiences.
And it gave women an opportunity to see this is not a problem about me and my failure to stand up for myself or my failure to call the roles or my
failure to deal with this particular situation. This is a pattern of behavior that many women are vulnerable to. And that's also what I'd say
about equal pay. I think women are incredible vulnerable to equal pay for reasons we'll probably discuss in a moment. But I think seeing the patent
is critical to understanding what we can do about it.
AMANPOUR: So, seeing the patent you have to start, you know, pulling the threads. So, let's start with yours. You, in 2017, basically went public
once you discovered that, in fact, you were being paid less than half of what others of equal status, who happened to be men, were being paid. Just
describe what was your aha moment. How did that -- how did you discover it?
GRACIE: So, there was a very unpleasant shock which was received by a number of senior BBC women at the same moment, on the 19th of July, 2017,
when the BBC was force the by the government, which is fed up of the BBC paying senior managers and stars a lot of money without any explanation of
how much or why or whatever, and these were years of austerity, obviously, in the U.K.
Economically, a lot of people in this country average income under 30,000 pounds. Huge pay packets going out to senior people at the BBC and the
government was getting fed up of it. And so, it insisted that anyone who is earning more than the prime minister, their pay was going to be
disclosed. And so, the pay was disclosed that summer in bands of 50,000 pounds.
And I discovered that my male peer was earning between 200,000 pounds and 250,000 pounds where my packet at that time was 134,000 pounds. Now, that
was a lot of money. It's a public service broadcaster. I never had any problem with my salary. I thought it was generous.
However, before I went to China, I said, you have to pay me equally to the men to go to China because this is a big job, a new job. This is hugely
difficult to get this story effectively on toward our flagship programs. I'm the only person you've got. Well, they had begged me to do the job and
I had already turned them down a couple of times.
So, I said, in order for me to go, which is big sacrifice for me and my family is to live in the other side of world, deal with police detentions,
deal with surveillance, deal with all the difficulties of fighting with that story and getting it on to air, you're going to pay me equally. And
so, then it was a shock when I discovered, three and a half years later, that that wasn't going to (ph) happen.
AMANPOUR: And you, obviously, speak fluent mandarin. I mean, you are steeped in your area of specialty as a China correspondent and China
editor. What happened when you told them, hey, guys, what gives? I told you I would not go. Essentially, you lied to me. You told me that you
would give us -- give me equal pay for equal play?
GRACIE: Yes. So, what happened was the same as what happens to many other women, which was our employer started, you know, finding reasons for the
difference. To be fair, they did offer me a pay rise. It was 45,000 pounds, but it was a pay rise. They imagined that this was a transaction
looking for a price whereas we saw it as an issue of principle. About the money, definitely. Because women, at the bottom, importantly, rather like
the #MeToo movement, all the people without a big public name and a high profile, all the people at the lower end of the pay scale, many of them
suffering similar pay inequality.
So, we felt this was something where the money was important to some people, even if it wasn't, at the end of the day, the thing that we were
exactly fighting for. And I gave the money away when I --
AMANPOUR: So, to be clear, you did, you gave a huge amount.
GRACIE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: 360,000-plus pounds. But in a way, you weren't looking for a rise or a raise or whatever, you were looking for equal pay.
GRACIE: Yes. Because I was so -- I wanted my work to be valued equally. And frankly, as we all experience in our workplaces, in micro measures, in
all kinds of relationships, power -- pay is about power. Pay is about status. Pay is about the value that your bosses put on your work. If you
accept that your work is going to be valued at half your male peer, you're going to be valued like that in other respects, as well.
[13:30:02]
And, also, really importantly for women to understand, I think, is that your promotion, your progression will follow your pay as well. The two
things are like a chicken and egg.
And if that man is paid more than you, your employer is going to be valuing him more -- unconscious bias -- and also is going to be consciously
thinking, I need to give that man the promotion because I'm already paying him more, so he's going to have to have the promotion, whatever I think
about the value of their work.
AMANPOUR: So, one of the things that sort of counterintuitively helped you was BBC being forced to disclose its salaries.
GRACIE: Totally.
AMANPOUR: But why? People who are listening in America, what about the BBC made it have to disclose its salaries?
GRACIE: It was because it's a public service broadcaster. And, therefore, it was spending public money.
You know, individual members of the audience earning less than 30,000 pounds a year are all paying a license fee money. And the government
wanted to say to the BBC, you're going to have to explain how you're spending your money on all these big shot stars.
And so it was that element. But the BBC is an organization which is supposed to stick by its values, truth being one of them, trust being
another, telling the facts and checking the facts. And it was like that's what we do.
I have been a BBC journalist for more than 30 years.
And...
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: ... which is quite incredible, given how you have taken on your bosses right to the very, very top. And you have gone to the very top.
And you have even testified in public at a special hearing.
I want to play just a little bit of that testimony.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACIE: If the BBC can't sort it out for me, for me, a single person of 55 in a powerful position, then how can it sort it out for more vulnerable
people who don't have a public profile? That's my concern.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: How much of a toll did it take on you personally?
I mean, I read one of the things you said that, when you discovered that you were being paid less than half the males who were doing an equal job,
you said it was -- that shocked to you so profoundly.
I mean, it just shocked your body.
GRACIE: So, there was the initial shock. That's a sense of betrayal, as you explained earlier.
And then the worse betrayal for me was to go through an internal process, which is supposed to put right where it placed problems, and to feel that
you're being gamed at every turn, that your employer is using the power asymmetry.
And I feel that this is universal, the BBC not alone in this, not entirely universal. There are some great employers out there who are doing better.
But it is too commonplace that employers are using the power of the data. They have all the pay data. Obviously, they amass it.
They, in many cases, impose pay secrecy on the workplace, so that women don't know the facts how their pay compares to the man doing the same job.
AMANPOUR: What is the solution, then? If secrecy is the problem, the main problem, what is the solution?
GRACIE: So I think it's not necessarily the main problem. There are several problems. I mean, it's complex.
Otherwise, we would have -- amazing women would have got this fixed.
AMANPOUR: But many people, right, don't want their salary public.
GRACIE: No.
AMANPOUR: It's one of those things. Sex, politics, salary, people don't like to talk about that in public.
GRACIE: I know, but they need to get over that. Women need to get over that, because, who is this serving? It's not serving women. There are
structural reasons why women are vulnerable to being undervalued and underpaid.
One is unconscious bias and then conscious bias. The fact is, we're all stereotyping creatures. And for thousands of years, women have been doing
certain unpaid things. And we're new immigrants to the workplace. We're going to be undervalued, and -- unless we're vigilant.
AMANPOUR: But I wanted to ask you, because this is actually kind of crucial. I don't know what you think, but I feel that the MeToo movement
has made this issue -- it just won't happen again.
In other words, women who face this kind of sexual harassment, assault, and worse will always know that they can talk about it and now will always be
believed. I mean, that's -- that's -- do you think that?
GRACIE: No.
AMANPOUR: No, you don't?
GRACIE: No.
I think both -- I have seen -- I have been in a trench in this equal pay fight for -- like, I was in the trench for a year. And then I have been
talking to -- I mean, one of the things that happened was thousands of women ended up writing to me, stopping me on the street, texting me,
sending me messages on social media to tell me about their stories.
And I think, unfortunately, we have a lot more work to do, both in terms of the MeToo struggle and in terms of the equal pay struggle. People get
victimized. People get scared. It's very difficult to face some of these powerful men in workplaces, both in terms of the MeToo discussion and in
terms of the equal pay discussion.
AMANPOUR: I want to show this tiny little prop that I have been given. It says here 79 percent. And the fact is that women are paid 79 percent of
what men make. What if they only worked 79 percent of the day?
It is, in fact, as you point out, illegal to pay women less for the same job.
GRACIE: And, yet it's happening in so many places. And basically, in my workplace, the answer when we said, you're paying women less for the same
work, then my employer just found excuses for doing that, rather than actually closing the gap.
So, that -- that is very serious. And that is happening whenever women take on this fight.
[13:35:02]
AMANPOUR: Why do you think -- and is it because you're so powerful? I mean, are they embracing you with love at the BBC?
(LAUGHTER)
AMANPOUR: You are there. You are a presenter now on one of their main channels.
You're still there in the sort of belly of the beast, so to speak. I mean, it's a great news organization.
GRACIE: Yes.
AMANPOUR: How do your colleagues and bosses look at you now?
GRACIE: So, we are a work family. I have been there for more than 30 years.
I'm not walking away from this fight. This is what we need to take on. And our values are enshrined -- they're actually etched into the wall at
the BBC. It's like, besides our statute of George Orwell, it says, if liberty means anything, it means the right to tell powerful people what
they don't want to hear.
And it's like, I can just point to that whenever my bosses say, thanks, Carrie, for yet another unhelpful bit of feedback in the shape a whole old
book. It's like, well, just look at the sign on the wall. We're here to educate, inform, entertain. I'm trying to do all three.
And I'm trying to tell women, men, and employers, wake up. This is serious.
AMANPOUR: And you have committed all this to your book. And that's why we're doing this interview right now.
So I want to play a little sound bite from Megan Rapinoe, who's the star...
GRACIE: Oh, the hero.
AMANPOUR: Yes, the American soccer star.
And this is what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEGAN RAPINOE, U.S. WOMEN'S SOCCER PLAYER: To be honest, I think everybody -- I think everybody is ready for it. It's time. I think that we've put
this whole movement on our back and done so, so beautifully, the entire team.
I think the conversation deserves to be moved to the next step. And I think everybody is ready for it and excited for it, to be honest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So she's putting her money where her mouth is. She's demanding equal pay.
And let's not forget that, when it comes to U.S. soccer, the women have won the World Cup four times.
GRACIE: Oh, yes.
AMANPOUR: The men haven't, and yet they're still being a huge amount more than the women.
So what do you hope your book will do for young women? I mean, you say, obviously, things have to change in the workplace. And it's up to bosses.
But it's also, you said, up to women to find their own voices.
GRACIE: Yes, it's up to women to know their value. And I think Megan Rapinoe, she knows her value. She's really worked it out. No one can take
that away from her what she did.
And I had to think hard at the age of 55, having made the mistake of trusting too much to the law, my ethical employer, the progress in the late
20th and early 21st centuries. I trusted too much, and I then had to wake up and think, what is your value?
You speak Mandarin. You have done all this stuff. You have won all these prizes. You have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no, no, you're not
going to be told that you're less than equal, unless somebody comes and gives you a very good reason for it.
They never gave me a good reason, and so I fought on. And I think I would say to all women, as they enter the workplace, you need to look after
yourself. So you need to start having these conversations inside your head and outside your head about your value. Where is your value to your
workplace? How are you going to articulate it, assert it, get it across?
How are you going to remind your employer that, actually, these are big structure issues, the biases, the motherhood penalty, and also what are
they doing about the gender pay gap? Does success in your organization ever look like you? If it doesn't, is it going to change? And if they
don't seem to care about it changing, should you be moving on?
I think, if women start to have those conversations and really think hard about it in their 20s and 30s, then come the moment when the gender pay gap
really opens out in childbearing years, then they are going to be in a strong position to navigate that effectively.
AMANPOUR: Carrie Gracie, thank you very much, indeed, for waging this fight.
GRACIE: My pleasure. Lovely to be here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Know your value, break the silence -- Really important lessons for women.
And we're turning now to a somber anniversary.
On September 11, 2001, 18 years ago, the children of the prestigious Stuyvesant High went to school as usual. Little did they know that, just a
few minutes later, a few blocks away, two planes would fly into the World Trade Center, a coordinated act of terror that would strike the whole
world.
They were just teenagers, and it would take years to process what they experienced.
Director Amy Schatz and Stuyvesant graduate Taresh Batra tell their story in her new HBO documentary, "In the Shadow of the Towers."
And they both sat down with our Hari Sreenivasan to talk about how that terrible day shaped a generation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Taresh, Amy, thanks so much for joining us.
So, Taresh, take us back to that day. What do you remember about it?
TARESH BATRA, FORMER STUYVESANT STUDENT: It was my second or third day of school, and I was 13 years old, so pretty young, pretty excited, pretty
bright-eyed, because it was the first time I was going to school in Manhattan.
And every classroom had the news on. And I had happened to stumble upon -- into a classroom as well. And it just happened to have the -- have a
window to the towers. And so one plane had hit, and we were watching the TV coverage of that plane, and also just looking at the smoke from the
window...
[13:40:02]
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
BATRA: And happened to be going back and forth between the TV, the towers, the TV, the towers, and happened to be looking outside the window, and saw
the second plane go onto the second tower, and looked back at the TV, and saw that again in replay.
So that kind of spurred the entire school kind of realizing what was going on.
SREENIVASAN: That this was not an accident anymore.
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: That this wasn't some sort of fluke thing. There might have been intent.
Amy, you almost have a 360 view. I have spoken to so many different kids. What happened at that moment when they realized that the dynamic changes
here, that this is perhaps an intentional act?
AMY SCHATZ, DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, "THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS": Well, in talking with the eight alumni from Stuyvesant, it seemed -- what struck me
is how vivid their recollection was, their memories of the moment, and also even remembering what they were thinking at that time.
The students didn't all realize what was happening, even though people had witnessed the planes going into the building. And so what was stunning is
just how visceral, even to this day, 18 years later, the images, the smells, the sounds.
There was a lot of uncertainty. There was a lot of confusion.
SREENIVASAN: Right.
SCHATZ: But, nonetheless, it's all -- it was all very vivid to them.
SREENIVASAN: Right.
So, for those initial moments, you guys had planned for fire drills, but there really an immediate, let's get out of the building, right?
BATRA: No, that's right.
I think they were trying to figure out whether it was safer for us to stay in the building contained or evacuate, and, if we were to evacuate, where
would we go? Students were coming from all over the city.
SREENIVASAN: People don't know about Stuyvesant in other parts of the world that are watching this that it's kind of a magnet school. There's
kids that compete and get -- to get into this place.
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: And so they're coming from all over New York City just to get here.
BATRA: Yes.
And so I think they weren't quite sure how to best keep us safe. There were a lot of rumors flying around at the time.
SREENIVASAN: This is an era pre-Twitter, right?
BATRA: Pre-Twitter, pre-Internet.
SREENIVASAN: Pre-cell phone.
BATRA: Well, not pre-Internet.
SCHATZ: Pre-texting.
BATRA: Yes, pre-Internet kind of on our fingertips.
SCHATZ: Yes.
BATRA: And there were rumors that there were additional attacks. There were rumors that there was a gas leak in school.
There were rumors that the school itself was going to be attacked. And you obviously don't know what to believe. You don't know what is going on.
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
BATRA: Eventually, they did decide to evacuate us.
SREENIVASAN: Where do you go?
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: I mean, the subways aren't working anymore.
BATRA: Yes.
SREENIVASAN: I mean, everything is stopped.
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: What do you do?
BATRA: The only thing I remember is the message being, head north. So, walk outside, head north.
And there was obviously a mass of people walking up the West Side Highway just away from -- it wasn't that difficult to figure out which way north
was. At that age...
SREENIVASAN: I mean, your school is a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.
BATRA: Right. Right, and so kind of just away from the smoke, away from the soot, and just trying to get as far away as possible.
SREENIVASAN: Here is a clip we have, when one of those kids talks about getting a cell phone call for the first time to his parents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My father was at work that day. My father is a dentist, and he works in -- he worked in Queens.
And on the television, he saw that this was happening. And an assistant, a dental assistant, came into the room and told him that Stuyvesant High
School exploded.
That's what she heard. She may have heard evacuated and misspoke. And my dad collapsed on the ground, because he thought that the school exploded.
And he was waiting for a call. And we had one friend who had a Nextel cell phone ,which I don't know if they exist anymore, but Nextel at the time,
they had the biggest cell phones, the biggest antennas, and they just worked everywhere.
He was the only friend with a cell phone. And he allowed each of us, one after the next, to call home. And I called my father. And he was bawling,
crying on the phone.
He's like: "Where are you?"
I said: "I'm in Downtown Manhattan. I'm with friends."
He says: "Please be safe. They don't know if there are more attacks happening."
And this is something I remember to this day. My dad over the phone said to me: "Please, please, just survive."
And him saying that to me made me realize sort of the predicament I was in. I knew, but hearing my dad's concern in his voice that what he said to me,
I felt like I -- that's when I realized I was in a war zone. That's what I felt like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: Amy, we kind of forget -- and there's another character in the film that says this -- but there were kids -- these are children that
are in the middle of this.
And they're all adults now, but, in the coverage of it that day, most of the time, what we're focusing on is adults walking away from this. This
was a financial center. It was a commerce area. People were working there.
[13:45:03]
But here are these group of kids that were going to school that were witnessing and really part of a historical event.
SCHATZ: Right.
What was so poignant about it, I think, is the fact that these were kids that were 13, and not only imagining what they saw, seeing the buildings
collapsing, the plane crashing into the buildings, seeing jumpers, seeing this enormous dust cloud coming out at them, but also the idea, like, I
need to get home. I need -- I can't call my parents.
To me, that's very heartbreaking, you know, the idea that a child alone, teachers -- I don't know if your teachers were with you on that evacuation,
but the question is how to get home. The subways weren't working. There was no way to call.
I mean, Mohammed talked about this -- the friend who shared the phone.
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
SCHATZ: But for a young person, not being able to -- having to figure out how to get home, I think, is really heart-wrenching.
SREENIVASAN: So what happens when you get home?
BATRA: Yes, getting home, I think -- what I remember from that day -- at that age, part of the -- one of the things that you lean on is kind of the
reactions of the adult in the room.
And you can kind of feel relatively safe if other people feel in control. And I think what was really jarring about that day was, obviously, there
were sirens everywhere. There was more police than I had ever seen. There was just -- there was such clear chaos. There was such a clear
understanding that no one here was in control.
You know, at that point, I didn't know what terrorism really was. I was young. I think how scary it was, was evident when, getting home, it wasn't
like my parents said, OK, this is what happened, you're safe now, everything is fine.
Everyone was glued to the TV to try to understand what actually was happening, the level of fear that we should be experiencing. And so it
kind of built upon itself. I don't think the fear -- I fully appreciated until probably after I was home.
SREENIVASAN: And add to this dimension of being a brown kid walking through New York with your friends, walking away from a catastrophe. At
13, were you conscious of it?
Because another thing that people don't know about Stuyvesant is, it's a lot of immigrant kids from all over the city, right?
BATRA: Yes.
SREENIVASAN: I mean, that's just sort of kind of a safe space, and that's a normalized view of the world.
And now here you are walking en masse away from..
BATRA: Right.
You know, at that point, there weren't frequent terrorist attacks. There wasn't kind of a war on Islam that was so mainstream that I had a sense and
fear that, oh, my God, this is a person that's showing up on the TV that is suspected that is brown and looks like me.
I don't think I realized that I was potentially seen as similar to the enemy, until we were walking north and...
(CROSSTALK)
SREENIVASAN: In fact, we have that clip. I think we can play it, just a second.
BATRA: Sure.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS")
BATRA: We were feeling like we were walking together away from danger. And someone amongst us that was walking the same direction as us was
looking at someone that I was with as the enemy, and it just kind of blew my mind.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I remember, we were with one of the younger girls -- I can't recall her name -- that wore a hijab.
And I remember somebody from across the street, like a construction worker- type dude, like, yelled at her, like, "Go back to where you came from."
And we're like, "We're trying to go to Queens." Like, "We're trying to go back to where we came from."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: You're an American. You're walking away from what you perceive as a collective tragedy and then hear someone who's starting to
say, you're not as American as us.
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: In fact, you're with the other guy.
BATRA: Right. Yes.
That was kind of the beginning of realizing what was to come. Never, obviously, would have imagined how permeating this element of kind of
defending your Americanness would become in kind of our community and the community of people that are brown.
But it was kind of a jarring introduction to that concept.
SREENIVASAN: We had a conversation here with Ramy Youssef, who's a filmmaker. He has a show on. He even catalogs this, that there's kind of
a pre-9/11 and a post-9/11 to his teenage life.
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: Do you remember anything impacting you from that and changing either your world view or your behaviors or how your family got along?
BATRA: I think, from that point on, it seemed like what my parents were scared for, for me, was potentially different from what other people's
parents were scared of.
[13:50:03]
And there became a distinction on things that I should do, the things I should feel safe doing, and protections that I should take that were
specifically because there could be misperceptions, right? That's the way that my parents always like to categorized it, because I don't think they
wanted to also acknowledge that this truly existed.
They just thought that people might be confused. And we're not Muslim, which I think also kind of, I think, was a realization, and to me and to my
family, that there really is not a distinction based on...
SREENIVASAN: Racists don't stop to check I.D...
BATRA: Right.
SREENIVASAN: ... and figure out which mosque or temple or whatever you go to.
BATRA: Yes.
SREENIVASAN: Right.
BATRA: Yes.
And it brought me much closer to everyone in the community that looks like me, and I think my family as well, as opposed to, this is who we are, we're
from this certain region of India, and this is what our religion is, as opposed to, look, this is what we look like potentially to other people,
and we're all kind of in this together.
SREENIVASAN: Did this impact the sense of security of these children at kind of such an impressionable age?
SCHATZ: Well, what was interesting regarding that is that it seemed that the Stuyvesant community was united and supportive of each other.
And they're -- in all the interviews, it seemed as if there were friendships that developed and a sense of oneness and solidarity and
support that seemed unique, and that the friendships that were developed at that time are continued to this day.
And I think that's a beautiful outcome. And that, for -- in the filmmaking, it seemed important to tell the Stuyvesant story as well, that
there was this -- the school became a character.
SREENIVASAN: Right.
BATRA: Like, the school was not only at ground zero, but also the recovery and the support and the healing that needed to take place, the Stuyvesant
school was a part of that effort.
SREENIVASAN: Yes, and we have a clip about when you all start going back to school.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "IN THE SHADOW OF THE TOWERS")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we came back to school on October 8 or 9, I remember the smell. It smelled like burning and maybe chemically, but just
it smelled terrible.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was crazy. I mean, you had armed military checking our I.D.s going into school. You couldn't cross the West Side Highway
without being checked.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think there was a point of pride of not letting ourselves being too affected or letting ourselves show that we were too
affected.
LIZ O'CALLAHAN, STUDENT: I feel like it's a pretty safe space to be. And I know that it will be bring back emotions for me to be back in the
building, but I think that it's things I can cope with.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the barges that was removing debris from the World Trade Center was placed just north of our building in the Hudson
River.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were four or five blocks from this burning pile of rubble. You could smell it every day going into school. It had a very
unique smell that you never want to smell again. But that was reality. And that was life at Stuyvesant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: You go back to school. What are those conversations like? I mean, in the weeks and months after that, the United States begins a war
that is technically still on.
How does this community inside this school grapple with these issues in class?
BATRA: There were a lot of political debates at that time, and as I'm sure there were across high schools across the country.
You know, with my group of friends, and I think with a lot of people at Stuyvesant, there was -- rarely did we kind of refer to us being there.
Rarely did we refer to kind of that day.
It just wasn't something that we talked about. And, frankly, outside of the Stuyvesant community, we talked about it even less.
SREENIVASAN: You've chosen to stay in downtown. You live in downtown. You're raising a family there.
BATRA: I can see Stuyvesant from my balcony, which is wild.
SREENIVASAN: Yes. Yes.
So what are you going to tell your daughter about it or your son about it when they grow up?
BATRA: Yes.
Hopefully, Amy's producing something that will help me do it.
(LAUGHTER)
BATRA: You know, my wife, I think, who obviously is not -- well, she is not obviously, but she's not from New York.
She, over the years, has heard my perspective on the day. And I think I will lean on her a little bit to give a broader perspective on what
happened that day. And I think I will be there to remind her about New York, and what it means that we feel safe having her there, raising her
there.
[13:55:18]
I have never felt more safe, as even a person of color, than New York. And knowing that we were there and we kind of took care of our own, for the
most part, kind of really provides me with a sense of security.
So, I will make sure that she knows there's a reason why we stayed.
SREENIVASAN: Amy Schatz, Taresh Batra, thank you so much for joining us.
SCHATZ: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: That's it for now. Thanks for watching this special edition of AMANPOUR.
And, remember, you can always listen to our podcast, see us online at Amanpour.com. And you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter.
Goodbye from London.
END
