Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [205]
Oprah said she had spent a month at the school before the scandal was reported, but knew nothing about it because the girls had not told her. They had been instructed to always put on happy faces around “Mum Oprah” and never complain to her about anything. It was not until they read an article in the Sowetan [September 27, 2007], a daily newspaper in South Africa, about one child being taken out of the school by her mother after suffering “emotional abuse,” that fifteen students acknowledged the article’s accuracy and stepped forward with their own charges of abuse.
Because of the international publicity surrounding her school, Oprah needed to address the scandal, which she did by satellite from her Harpo studios in Chicago. She then released the tape on November 5, 2007, to U.S. news outlets, with unusual usage rules:
Please note the following per Harpo Productions for the use of Oprah News Conference footage:
1. Credit: Harpo Productions, Inc.
2. This footage may be used on our platforms only during the month of November 2007. No further use (including internet archiving) is authorized after November 30, 2007.
“She handled the matter of the sex scandal at her school with seeming transparency,” said one network executive, “but she would not allow the footage to be played over and over again. She distributed the tape with instructions that we could only use it for the remainder of the month, and we could not archive it or show it in perpetuity. That is absolutely unheard-of.”
The extreme control Oprah exercised over the press coverage of the sex abuse scandal stands in contrast to the unlimited press coverage she sought when opening her school. She spent months preparing for a ribbon-cutting that would showcase her dream to the world. She had talked about her school many times on her show, most recently before the official opening, when she introduced her audience to Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. They discussed the evils of moneylenders, and Oprah said she had learned about the practice “when I was in Africa the other day building a school.” She wanted to be accepted by the Nobel laureate as a peer, perhaps because she herself was being put forward as a Nobel candidate.
“I started the Nobel movement after Oprah appeared at the Dream Academy Dinner [May 24, 2005] to raise money for at-risk children whose parents are in prison,” said Washington, D.C., publicist Rocky Twyman. “When she stood up, praised God, opened her purse, and gave the Dream Academy a million dollars, I wanted to get her the Nobel Peace Prize … but the Nobel committee did not want to give it to a celebrity. So I formed a committee, and we talked to Dorothy Height [president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women], who was all for Oprah because Oprah had given Dr. Height two-point-five million in 2002 to pay off the mortgage on the NCNW headquarters.… Dr. Height contacted Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, and we set out to get publicity to collect a hundred thousand signatures for Oprah’s nomination to present to the Nobel committee.…
“Unfortunately, we only got forty thousand signatures … because a lot of men, black and white, refused to sign … and a lot of religious people would not sign because they said Oprah was not married to Stedman and she gave a bad example to our young people by her lifestyle. I believe we all sin and come short of the glory of God, but these folks, mostly from black churches, and all conservative and law-abiding, felt very strongly that Oprah had put herself above the laws of God. I was stunned, but I’m afraid there are strong feelings against her in our [African American] community.… Of the forty thousand signatures we were able to get, most were white, not black. We got a lot of publicity and raised awareness for her getting the prize, but in the end I guess God did not want it to happen.”
First Lady Barbara Bush on The Oprah Winfrey Show, October 23, 1989, discussing her life in politics. Oprah had asked Mrs. Bush to appear on her show