The Double Standard in Media Coverage: When Power Dynamics Get Lost in the Headlines

I’ve been an HR executive for over two decades and an author of “Mastering a High-Value Company Culture,” and found the Fox Sports controversy horribly mis-framed by media’s misplaced focus. The spotlight has fallen, at least to date, decidedly on the alleged actions by Joy Taylor while giving Charlie Dixon-the actual state of institutional power that leverages authority-relatively a complete pass in public opinion.

That dearth of balance serves only as a symptom of an even greater problem-that relates broadly to how we think about workplace impropriety. So, if the charges of some kind of improper relationship or quid pro quo arose, why does one rush to judgment on an employee, paying a vastly lesser amount of attention to the real actor here, which is the executive who actually holds the organizational power and who has ultimate responsibility for ethical guardrails?

Let me make one thing very clear: Executive leaders are the designers and protectors of corporate culture. They set the tone, establish boundaries, and bear the fiduciary responsibility for protecting both their people and their company from these very situations. If an executive utilizes their position to leverage a personal relationship or enables such behavior to continue, then he is not only committing misconduct but also betraying his mandate for leadership and putting serious risk on the whole organization.

Story after story shouldn’t be made about the alleged choices of Joy Taylor. Rather, it should be:

* How did an executive feel enabled to allegedly create a culture whereby a professional’s advancement could be dictated by personal relationships?

* Why do existing mechanisms of oversight fail to understand and address these behaviors?

* What failures in the system allowed this situation to allegedly prevail and impact possibly several employees?

* Where was the board oversight, and why didn’t stronger checks and balances on executive power exist?

As I said in “Mastering a High-Value Company Culture,” organizational culture trickles down from the top. When executives act unethically or tolerate unethical behavior, they commit not just an individual violation but poison the whole well. That public discourse remains obsessed with employee judgment rather than executive abuse of power shows how deeply our cultural biases run.

The result of this misplaced focus is a vicious cycle wherein powerful executives may be shielded from serious consequences, while employees, especially women and minorities, are left facing public scrutiny and reputational damage. Until we turn the collective lens on leadership accountability and the executives responsible for setting the parameters of organizational culture, we will continue to see these same patterns unfold across industries.

Now is the time to refocus attention on the accountability of executives and the cultural mandates that should guide executive behavior. This is not a story about choices; this is a story about power, responsibility, and the inalienable duty of leaders to foster and protect ethical work cultures.

We have to be better at leading businesses, and we have to be better in life. The next time these types of allegations occur, let our chief scapegoat be where it should go-the executives, where responsibilities about organizational culture and ethical leadership rest with them.