View Caption Hide Caption DeWayne Walker, an employee at CNN, is part of a class-action lawsuit against his employer. CREDIT: Walker 
 
 This was posted on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 by Rodney Ho on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog 
 
 Former and current black employees on Tuesday filed a class action lawsuit against Atlanta-based CNN, Turner Broadcasting and New York based parent company Time Warner for racial discrimination. 
 
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 “As a result of the current discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of DeWayne Walker vs. CNN, Time Warner & Turner, we have uncovered stories involving abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation and discrimination,” said Daniel Meachum in a press release. 
 
 The press release provided a photo of DeWayne Walker, a CNN producer who sued CNN individually in January for $50 million for racial discrimination and retaliation for filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He accused CNN of not promoting him over 13 years because he is black, skipped over frequently for promotions in favor of white employees. 
 
 According to his LinkedIn page, Walker is an integrated marketing manager at CNN. 
 
 Walker is not actually a plaintiff in this particular case but is a client of Meachum’s and his individual lawsuit is still active. Celeslie Henley, a former executive administrative assistant at CNN, and Ernest Colbert Jr., a senior manager at TBS, are the only named plaintiffs though Meachum said 20 to 30 other unnamed current and former Turner employees helped him out with information about their experiences. 
 
 “This discrimination represents a company-wide pattern and practice,” the lawsuit asserts, “rather than a series of isolated incidents.” He said the company has been discriminating against blacks for more than 20 years. 
 
 The 40-page lawsuit filed in the United States District Court in the Northern District of Georgia said blacks – especially black males – are discriminated against in evaluations, compensation and promotions. Blacks receive “disproportionately lower scores on evaluations,” the lawsuit alleges. 
 
 It says based on data provided by Turner, blacks are terminated at a higher rate than whites and promoted at a significantly slower rate. And the lawsuit said written and unwritten policies and practices for performing evaluations and promotions discriminate against blacks. Those policies “allow supervisors to essentially handpick candidates through word of mouth for available positions and make promotion decisions on the basis of subjective criteria,” the lawsuit said. “This system prevents qualified African-Americans from competing equally for positions or even knowing that they are available.” 
 
 Meachum said at a press conference Wednesday morning at his downtown Atlanta office that he has been collecting information about CNN and Turner for three years before filing the class-action suit. 
 
 “Upon information and belief,” the suit says, “African-American employees have had to endure racial slurs and prejudicial biases from superiors such as, ‘it’s hard to manage black people’ and ‘who would be worth more: black slaves from times past or new slaves.’ ” 
 
 Meachum said he is “outraged as an African American lawyer to have to sit down and go through the facts with people telling what I’ve been told these past three years.” 
 
 While blacks make up 30 to 35 percent of CNN’s mid-level managerial and staffing positions, the lawsuit said, “they are drastically under-represented at higher pay grades and senior positions, while still being required to generally labor three times as long as Caucasians [for promotions.].” 
 
 And even blacks in the highest positions are not in the more crucial departments, the lawsuit said. In the Media Group Division, the Legal Division and Strategy Division, for instance, not a single black person is represented at the top levels, it said. 
 
 Henley, 44 of Fairburn, worked at CNN for seven years as an executive administrative assistant. She alleged that she was mistreated in the workforce based on race, sex and pregnancy. She said she worked far longer hours than her white counterparts. And she said she was treated significantly worse after coming back from maternity leave. She said she was fired as retaliation for complaining to HR in early 2014. 
 
 Colbert, 44, of Ellenwood, has worked at TBS for almost 20 years. He claimed in the lawsuit that he was consistently paid below grade level compared to comparable white employees. He also said he failed to receive a proper job description for nine years and was given senior-level managerial work without being properly compensated. He was promoted in August, 2016 to senior manager but said he is still underpaid compared to his white counterparts with comparable jobs. “Additionally, years of Mr. Colbert’s positive performance evaluations have been nullified due to TBS’s failure to maintain Mr. Colbert’s personnel file,” the lawsuit said. 
 
 In the lawsuit, Colbert said he repeatedly requested to be promoted to a higher pay grade. A white person who had held his position previously was promoted to a job grade several levels above Colbert’s while performing the same job duties, he said. 
 
 The class action covers all blacks employed in salaried and mid-level managerial positions in the United States at any time between April, 1997 to the present. 
 
 “I’ve seen people at Turner that have worked there for 14, 15 years with a total raise over that time of $5,000 to $6,000. That’s horrible,” Meachum said. “That is not the face that I think Turner and CNN wants to put on. That’s the reality of the people who work there.” 
 
 At least three others have filed individual lawsuits against CNN over the past three years. 
 
 When I asked CNN president Jeff Zucker about the lawsuits last month, he declined to comment. A CNN spokeswoman today declined to comment about the latest lawsuit. 
 
 Meachum, who represents Walker, showed up on “Real Housewives of Atlanta” to help out Cynthia Bailey this season with her divorce to Peter Thomas. (She has yet to file. He said they are trying to put the entire divorce together and have it all agreed upon before filing anything.) Meachum also represented actor Wesley Snipes for many years. ||||| A new court filing alleges that Turner employees faced racial discrimination that held them back in their careers and led to at least one former assistant being fired. Roughly two dozen current and former employees of CNN and TBS (both owned by Turner) claim that there is a systematic problem with “discriminatory practices being implemented throughout all of Turner’s Networks [sic],” according to a complaint filed Tuesday evening. 
 
 The complaint cites statistics showing that black employees at Turner are promoted at a much lower rate than whites. The lawsuit alleges that this “can only be attributed to the fact that Turner, specifically CNN has implemented formal [emphasis in original] written and unwritten policies and practices regarding promotions[.]” The attorney who filed the complaint, Daniel Meachum, told LawNewz.com that the statistics were gathered by Turner themselves as part of an internal study. 
 
 Black employees also historically received lower scores on their evaluations, according to the complaint. “There is no objective factor other than race that can explain this disparity, since performance is not linked to job title or education,” it alleges. 
 
 One of the named plaintiffs, Ernie Colbert Jr., claims that in 19 years of working at TBS, he has only been promoted twice, and was paid less than his white coworkers. The other named plaintiff, Celeslie Henley, alleges that she suffered discrimination, and then lost her job after she complained. Henley claims that after she received discriminatory treatment from white managers, she complained to human resources, and was promptly terminated five days later. 
 
 Meachum is also representing DeWayne Walker, a CNN producer who is also currently suing the network for race discrimination in a separate action. Walker first filed his $50 million lawsuit in December 2015, claiming that he has been passed over for promotion throughout his career at CNN because of his race. He also alleges that the company retaliated against him after he brought a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 
 
 Meachum said in a statement obtained by LawNewz.com that during the course of investigating Walker’s case, “we have uncovered stories involving abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation and discrimination.” Meachum says that CNN, Turner Broadcasting, and parent company Time Warner have practices and policies that impact black employees in particular, keeping them from being promoted and preventing them from taking action. He told LawNewz in a phone conversation that the allegations stemmed from statistics provided by Turner that showed a disparity in treatment of black employees, which led to the new lawsuit. 
 
 Since the lawsuit was publicly announced Wednesday morning, Meachum said he has received “20 or 30 calls from people asking to part of the class.” This is in addition to between 25 and 30 people already attached to the case. 
 
 LawNewz.com reached out to Turner. They did not have any comment on the case. 
 
 Henley and Colbert v Turner by LawNewz on Scribd 
 
 [Image of CNN via Shutterstock, image of DeWayne Walker via Daniel Meachum] ||||| Two African-American employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against CNN, Turner Broadcasting and its parent company, Time Warner, alleging racial discrimination. 
 
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 The two plaintiffs in the lawsuit are identified as Celeslie Henley and Ernest Colbert Jr. Henley is a former executive administrative assistant at CNN, while Colbert is still employed by Turner as a senior manager at TBS. 
 
 "The current workplace culture utilizes practices that discourages or prohibit minorities from exercising their rights under employment discrimination statutes," they allege in the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday. 
 
 They are represented by Daniel Meachum, whose Atlanta-based firm has a clientele that includes actor Denzel Washington and BET founder Bob Johnson. He also has represented actor Wesley Snipes and former NFL star Michael Vick. 
 
 Meachum said a discrimination lawsuit filed last year against CNN, Turner and Time Warner uncovered stories involving "abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation and discrimination.” 
 
 He noted that 20 to 30 other current and former Turner employees shared what they've observed and experienced over the years. 
 
 Turner, whose networks include CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, TruTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang, said it does not want to comment on pending litigation. 
 
 The new 40-page class-action lawsuit includes data provided by Turner. That data, according to the suit, shows that "salaries paid by Turner and/or CNN to African-American compared with salaries paid to Caucasian employees reveals dramatic differences in pay in similarly situated employees of different race. Upon information and belief, the pattern exists throughout the company." 
 
 The data also shows that promotions for African-Americans to high levels within the organization are nonexistent, according to the lawsuit. 
 
 "In the 46-year history of Turner's network, no African-American has ever been promoted or selected to be President of Turner Broadcasting, Inc, or oversee any of Turner's networks," it reads. 
 
 The new lawsuit is the latest allegation of discrimination against the broadcasting giant. 
 
 DeWayne Walker alleged racial discrimination in a $50 million lawsuit filed late last year against CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner Inc. and Turner Services Inc. 
 
 Walker, who is an integrated marketing manager at CNN, according to his LinkedIn page, also claims he was retaliated against for filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint. 
 
 He claims he has been passed over for promotion nine times because of race between 2002 and 2015. 
 
 Two other CNN African-American employees, Omar Butcher and Ricky Blalock, have also filed discrimination lawsuits against the company this year. 
 
 Butcher, a former associate producer at CNN, was fired in 2015. 
 
 He is suing the network for wrongful termination after, he claims, co-workers discriminated against him. 
 
 Blalock was a producer for Ashleigh Banfield's CNN legal show, which has since moved to sister network HLN. 
 
 According to court documents, Blalock's lawyer alleges that CNN “intentionally and willfully violated Mr. Blalock’s right to be free from race-based discrimination in his employment.”
– Current and former black employees of CNN and Turner Broadcasting filed a class action lawsuit against the companies and their parent company, Time Warner, this week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The employees allege racial discrimination. CNN producer DeWayne Walker sued the network individually in January, claiming he was skipped over for promotions for more than 13 years because he's black. "As a result of the current discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of DeWayne Walker ... we have uncovered stories involving abuse of power, nepotism, revenge, retaliation, and discrimination," says Walker's lawyer, Daniel Meachum. Walker is not a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit; just two plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit, but Meachum says 20 to 30 other unnamed people told him of their experiences, which prove "a company-wide pattern and practice" going back more than two decades, he says. The lawsuit alleges that black employees receive "disproportionately lower scores on evaluations" and are also discriminated against when it comes to compensation, promotions, and terminations. It also alleges that black employees have been subjected to racial slurs from their superiors. Two other black CNN employees have sued the network for discrimination this year, the Hill reports. Meachum tells LawNewz that since his lawsuit was announced, 20 to 30 additional people have requested to become part of the class.