It was lucky, Toby thought, that he'd put the call through on speaker-phone, because the bellow of "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?" that answered his greeting was probably going to cause some hearing loss even from a distance.
Toby's talks with his boss had always reminded him of the "PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE!" scene in Network between Howard Beale and the corporate chairman. He suspected that this was intentional, that his boss was trying to elicit the same meek, awed mortal-before-a-God reaction that the chairman got out of the unstable news anchor, and, as much as he hated to admit it, it kind of worked.
This, though? This was entirely new. There was nothing of the stentorian tones and the dignified lecture from a higher authority about the thundering profanity just now. This was an entirely new, thoroughly human side of his superior, and he wasn't sure what to make of it - least of all because he had no idea what could have provoked this.
He steeled himself, did his best to calm his nerves, and answered. "What was what?"
"Don't you pay attention to what your own employees are doing!? That Lisa Crowe bitch just did a piece on your stupid fox-thing making it look like we're some kind of racists and we forced her out! My own station calling me a bigot, right on the five o'clock news! I'm getting phone calls from damn near every news agency in the state! Our competitors are all over this! You have five minutes to convince me why I shouldn't have your head for this, Cooper!"
Toby's first reaction was one of astonishment. He'd expected some kind of fallout for letting Jay go, but he was thinking more along the lines of personal complaints from her coworkers, not a full-blown insurrection! After that came the resignation; he was going to have to clean up this mess, placate the boss, and keep them from all getting fired so that things could keep going as they were going. He kept a finger on the mute button as he heaved a heavy sigh.
"Well, I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but...this is quite seriously the first I've heard of it. I'm basically too understaffed to be able to keep an eye on everything my employees are doing at all times, especially now that I'm down another employee, and a key one at that. Jay was a good reporter and a solid utility player."
"Ugh, spare me the sob story," his boss said. "Look, if you didn't know about this, we can work with that. What I want you to do is get rid of Crowe, and we'll explain that this was her engaging in a personal vendetta, not your team. You can tell the other news outlets that the fox-girl's resignation was due to a communications mix-up."
Toby gaped. "'Communications mix-up?' Sir, earlier this week you made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that-"
"Communications mix-up."
Toby had been thinking of Network a lot in recent years, actually. He'd grown up with what he now thought of as the last, dying gasps of journalism as an institution, and watched his ambition of providing hard-hitting, fact-backed reporting and commentary get thrown out the window as the industry transformed to match the movie's prophecy of news-as-entertainment. At first, he was too happy to be working in the industry at all to notice, and by the time he did, he was too tied down with loyalties to his company and his co-workers, his commitment to wife and family, and the associated financial obligations to make a real fuss about it.
Corporate had demanded more sensationalist coverage for "maximum emotional impact," and he'd helped scare viewers into staying tuned by playing to their fears. Eventually he'd started internalizing them himself, and then the sun had changed, and there was a whole new set of things to be scared of, and things to keep the audience scared of...
He'd "gone along to get along" for years now, too burdened with the complexities of adult life to take a more difficult course...but for some reason, Toby found that he no longer cared. He was a man who'd just been pushed past the tipping point, and suddenly nothing was important enough for him to keep the charade up any longer. If he lost his job...well, he'd get another one. Terry would understand, and the kids could deal with it...it just wasn't worth it any more.
"Sir," he said. "I've done things I'm not too proud of in recent years, even before all this started, and I'm not going to pretend to be a saint. But I'll be God-damned if I'm going to lie for you. You've been pushing my team to be your little scare squad for the last ten years, and now you tell me to muscle one of my own out to serve your own biases, and you think they're not going to get angry about that?"
Toby laughed. "Oh hell, I'm as scared of the sun and the people it's hit as you, probably even more! But you know what? Monsters or not, the people in my newsroom, they look out for each other. Maybe you don't get that we're not all interchangeable drones here, but you've been poking at a hornet's nest for years now, and taking out another member of the family is only going to make them madder!"
"If you're not going to listen to authority, Cooper, then you're f-"
"BEFORE you do that!" Toby snapped. Much to his amazement, his boss was silenced. "If you fire me over this, not only will you have to fire or personally strong-arm the whole damn news team into doing things your way, I. Will. Tell. Them. Everything. Everything you've told me will be free for the taking to any rival networks that want to do their own stories on this. Ask yourself whether you really want that, sir."
There was a long silence. Finally his boss said, "Go on."
Toby was nearly giddy at having even got this far, but managed to keep his wits about him. "IF," he said, "you issue a private, written apology to Jay Warner, you do nothing to inhibit my attempts to fully reinstate her, with a bonus, you leave Lisa Crowe alone, and you back the hell off and let my news team be a news team, I will decline to comment on the events of the past week, and I will get my staff to do the same. You can tell the press it was an 'error in judgement' or whatever spinny bullcrap you like, but if you try to feed anyone an 'internal mix-up' story, it's open season for the rival networks."
There was another long silence. "Fine," his boss said at last. Toby wouldn't have thought it was possible to pack that much venom into a single word, but today was apparently just full of surprises.
He hung up the phone and exhaled completely. He hadn't realized how badly he was shaking until just now. Why hadn't he done this years ago? He'd finally regained some of his integrity and gotten corporate off his back, all in one fell swoop! He'd have to go give Lisa his humblest thanks, right after he was done feeling like he was about to throw up.
