Someone really hates Ben Sherwood.
An anonymously produced and circulated video about the new head of ABC News juxtaposes clips of his first speech to his new employees with a series of accusations against the former "Good Morning America" executive producer and author of several bestselling books, including the novel "The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud."
The video, posted on Vimeo, was purportedly produced by ABC News employees and sent to Gawker, which posted it Wednesday. The Vimeo posting was under the name of "Roone Arledge," the widely praised former head of ABC News.
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An ABC insider said Sherwood laughed off the video, and said it was probably too poorly done and had too "tangential a relationship with the truth" to have been produced by any employee of ABC News.
Among its claims: that Sherwood is constantly negative, exhibits "bizarre office behavior," lost viewers for "GMA," has no ideas, and — the most bitterly personal dig — lied about his sick mother as an excuse for leaving "GMA" in 2006.
Gawker noted in its posting that Sherwood said in 2009 that his mother was a "nine-year survivor of ovarian cancer." That would be in line with his 2006 explanation, and the video offers no evidence to contradict it.
It also offers no evidence for a claim that Sherwood got the ABC News job because his wife is a top executive for producer Brian Grazer.
ABC had no immediate comment.
The video:
Ben Sherwood:The Movie from Roone Arledge on Vimeo.