In the fall of 1989, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy released a memoir about his time as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Abernathy told the story that Rev. King had committed adultery with two women the night before he was murdered. On NBC’s “Today,” Bryant Gumbel, then co-host of NBC’s Today, gave a lecture: “When truth clashes with legend, print the legend.”
When Abernathy noted that King’s exploits were “common knowledge,” Gumbel responded, “Perhaps it would be better to say it was a common accusation.” He claimed that those pages “could just as easily have been omitted… you could argue that your writings prove nothing.”
This all came to mind on March 18, when The New York Times released an investigative report that Mexican-American labor leader Cesar Chavez, another “civil rights icon,” had not only committed adultery but had allegedly forced himself on girls as young as twelve. Chavez died in 1993.
His top female ally in the farmworker labor movement, Dolores Huerta, told the Times that Chavez raped her in a truck in the winter of 1966 and forced her to have sex in 1960. She said she had two children with him, who were given to other people to raise. Why didn’t this come out sooner? Huerta worried it would “hurt the farmworker movement.” So print the legend.
DEMS are facing a reckoning after putting the late labor leader on a pedestal as allegations of sexual abuse emerge
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass posted this photo of her younger self next to Cesar Chavez on Cesar Chavez Day last year. (Mayor Karen Bass)
All networks picked up the Times story on March 18, although the “CBS Evening News” only found room for 90 words. On the ‘PBS News Hour’ they interviewed Miriam Pawel, who wrote a book about Chavez and his movement in 2014. She said Chavez’s adultery was “well known” but that the new findings are “disturbing and add a whole other dimension to what we know about Cesar Chavez and to what has in some ways been an ongoing reassessment of his legacy over the past twenty years.”
ABC reporter John Quinones was stark: “Cesar Chavez has been a civil rights icon, a champion of farmworkers and a hero to millions of Latinos. But tonight, that legacy was shattered after an explosive investigation by The New York Times detailing allegations that Chavez groomed and sexually abused girls who worked in the farmworker movement.” ABC added that “Chavez has been honored with murals, schools and streets named in his honor, and annual Cesar Chavez Day celebrations.”
On March 19, Quinones got an interview with Huerta, and when he asked her what she would say to Chavez today, she said, “How could you?” Huerta did not speak out about her abuse at the hands of Chavez until she heard about the women who told the Times about their abuse as teenagers.
CESAR CHAVEZ DAY CANCELED BY UNIONS AFTER ‘CARE’ SEXUAL MOVEMENTS AGAINST CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER
She shocked Quinones when he asked how their supporters must be feeling now. She said: “I think we should remember the good he did. I don’t know – about the terrible things he did. I think we leave it to God – in God’s hands. He was a great leader, but unfortunately he had an evil side.”
On NBC Nightly News, reporter Camila Bernal explained the journalistic details of the alleged abuse of teenage girls: “The Times said it found extensive evidence to support the two women’s claims through interviews with more than 60 people, union records, confidential documents.” She added: “Neither the newspaper nor NBC News have been able to confirm Huerta’s claims.” It’s hard to imagine her saying that “I chose to keep my pregnancies a secret,” unless she disappeared from public view for several months each time.
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Not surprisingly, NBC ended with, “Huerta says the farmworker movement has always been more important than any individual.” If she really believed that, why was she only now making her accusations?
This all came to mind on March 18, when The New York Times released an investigative report that Mexican-American labor leader Cesar Chavez, another “civil rights icon,” had not only committed adultery but had allegedly forced himself on girls as young as twelve. Chavez died in 1993.
We should be satisfied that the broadcast networks picked up this story instead of using the Bryant Gumbel standard and sticking to “the legend.” It didn’t hurt that the story came from The New York Times, which they say is America’s largest newspaper. If this story had been published by a conservative newspaper, magazine or website, there would have been more hesitation, or even cries of fake news.
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None of these reports mentioned how President Barack Obama named a Navy freighter after Chavez in 2011. In 2012, Obama created the Cesar Chavez National Monument near Bakersfield, California, and gave Huerta a Presidential Medal of Freedom. None of them reminded viewers that President Joe Biden tweeted in 2023, “When I became President, I proudly placed a bust of César Chávez in the Oval Office — a constant reminder of the enduring values he embodied, the vision of freedom he fought for, and his commitment to social justice and equal dignity that we must uphold every day.”
Did Biden share the ‘values’ that Chavez embodied? Embarrassing Democrats is not something the broadcast networks define as news.
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