CBS' toxic culture can be seen in the "boys-will-be-boys" stories it tells

Vulture

Michael Weatherly, whom Eliza Dushku accused of sexual harassment on Bull that led to a $9.5 million settlement, plays the "the kind of seemingly innocuous, boys-will-be-boys male protagonist who has filled CBS’s airwaves for years," says Kathryn VanArendonk, pointing to other male protagonists on procedurals as CSI and NCIS and their spinoffs. She adds: "There have been exceptions on CBS’s schedule — shows like The Good Wife and Madam Secretary are about prominent women in positions of power — but the common feature of so many of CBS’s most successful dramas, the ones that have spun off multi-city franchises and run for dozens of years and are watched by millions of people each week, is pretty basic: A man has power, and he wields it for his own ends." As VanArendonk points out, it's not hard to make a connection "between this rule of thumb for so many of CBS’s dramas, and who decides what shows get on the air every TV season ... The stories CBS puts out into the world are the ones that reflect the interests of the people who make them, and what results is a self-perpetuating cycle. When we as CBS viewers watch stories that valorize male ego and male judgment, we’re bathed in a TV landscape that teaches us that men who have power are the default. So when men like Les Moonves, Brad Kern, and Michael Weatherly harass and abuse the women around them, their entitlement to hold positions of power appears normal in the context of the shows they make. They are entitled to that power, and that entitlement is confirmed and echoed by what we watch on TV, night after night. Occasionally, as often happens on Bull, what we’re seeing is borderline harassment that’s excused as romance, as (Jason) Bull’s professional relationships with women regularly trip over into sexual conquest. But more pervasively, what we watch on long-running CBS franchises is the repeated reiteration of who matters: Men in power are protagonists, and women are disposable."