When CBS decided to defend announcer Ben Wright, it attacked the truth

In the community of golf, Ben Wright, the CBS golf broadcaster and longtime golf writer, is invited to the best parties. He's an amiable, well-spoken man bursting with opinions and stories, delivered in a lovely British accent that isn't quite Oxbridge, but close. He describes his mother as a "minor Scottish aristocrat," and he prepared for London University at an all-boys English public school, Felsted. He has spent four decades in golf's elite circles. Everything about him contributes to a veneer of refinement. His boss's boss, David Kenin, the president of CBS Sports, calls Wright "a complex, sophisticated guy." John Bentley Wright, corpulent and jolly, highly compensated and often smelling very good, calls himself "a ham."

Every so often he slips up, and a coarser element of his personality, a Fleet Street side, emerges. In a recent interview with SI he described a former editor of his at the Financial Times as "a raging fag." (And he followed that with "I have nothing against homosexuals.") In 1992, writing in Southern Links, an American golf magazine now known as Links, Wright alleged that Muirfield's club secretary demanded "girlie pictures" in exchange for press credentials for the 1959 Walker Cup, which Wright was to cover for the London Daily Mirror. "I pleaded that I had no access to the newspaper's pin-up photographs, which were in any case nothing like as daring as the bare-breasted lovelies daily exposed nowadays in the British tabloids," he wrote. Later, to settle a libel suit, Wright dispatched a letter of apology and a $1,000 check to the secretary, the late Paddy Hanmer. "Seldom right but never in doubt"-that's what they say about Wright, good-naturedly, in the CBS trailers.

It was in a CBS trailer-on the second Thursday of May, shortly before noon, on the grounds of the DuPont Country Club, in Wilmington, Del., site of the 1995 McDonald's LPGA Championship-that Wright met Valerie Helmbreck, a reporter on the News Journal, a Delaware newspaper. They spent a half hour together, and neither his life nor hers has been the same since.

Helmbreck began her story, which ran on the front page of the News Journal on Friday, May 12, with a quote from Wright: "Let's face facts here. Lesbians in the sport hurt women's golf."

He was also quoted as saying, "They're going to a butch game and that furthers the bad image of the game." He was quoted as saying that homosexuality on the women's tour "is not reticent. It's paraded. There's a defiance in them in the last decade." And, "Women are handicapped by having boobs. It's not easy for them to keep their left arm straight, and that's one of the tenets of the game. Their boobs get in the way."

Wright, the story said, believes that the LPGA's homosexual image hinders corporate support; that the tour's leading players, including Michelle McGann and Laura Davies, lack charisma; and that modern women pros are wrong to emphasize power over finesse.

Before the story was published, word of the interview reached Wright's boss, Frank Chirkinian, the executive producer of golf for CBS, who was in Wilmington. Early that afternoon, Chirkinian called Helmbreck at the News Journal and told her that they needed to meet. Helmbreck, who did not know Chirkinian, asked him to spell his name and reveal his title. He ignored her request, and the terse conversation ended when Helmbreck hung up on him. The story had been out only a few hours on Friday morning when Wright, who is 63, was urged to leave Wilmington and go to CBS headquarters, in New York. There, for six hours, Wright and Kenin discussed the interview and the story it produced. Each man was accompanied by a lawyer. At the News Journal on Friday, Helmbreck and her editors received scores of calls, some from readers voicing opinions but many more from newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television programs, seeking comment. Helmbreck wouldn't talk, and the newspaper's editor said the paper stood by the accuracy of its story.

Late on Friday, Kenin released his findings: "I am convinced that the offensive statements attributed to Mr. Wright were not made." He also said that both Wright and CBS Sports had "been done a grave injustice in this matter." Wright offered two releases of his own. In a statement for reporters, Wright said he never used the words "boobs" or "butch" with Helmbreck. He maintained he never said lesbianism on the women's tour is "paraded" or that lesbians were bad for the image of the game. He wrote that he would "not discuss lesbianism with a stranger, just as I would not discuss my three divorces with a stranger." In a statement for the players, posted in the DuPont Country Club locker room Friday morning, Wright wrote, "I am disgusted at the pack of lies and distortion that was attributed to me." He said the same thing on CBS's Saturday coverage of the tournament. Looking directly into the camera and perspiring, Wright called Helmbreck's story "not only totally inaccurate but extremely distasteful."

Helmbreck's piece, an 1,100-word story in a cautious, responsible small-state daily, had all the elements needed to ignite a modern press brushfire: gay sex, male chauvinism, political incorrectness, sports, network television and a faintly famous figure-a TV personality-to wrap the whole thing around. The New York Post captured the moment in a five-word headline for its Saturday paper: THE BOOB ON THE TUBE.

The story had a short shelf life. It was a national story for a day or two, then interest sagged. Ultimately, the Wright-Helmbreck escapade proved to be an unsatisfying little saga, lacking a clear resolution. The interview wasn't tape-recorded. CBS put its word up against Helmbreck's and created reasonable doubt. "They could easily stomp on her," says Richard Sandomir, who covered the story for The New York Times, "so they did. Had it been a reporter they knew, Ben would have been gone."

In 1988 CBS fired Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder when he said on TV that blacks were physically better suited for sports than whites. In 1990 CBS suspended Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes for three months for making remarks that some gays and blacks found offensive. CBS was pressured into pulling Gary McCord from this year's Masters because the Augusta czars didn't like McCord's idea of humor. But Ben Wright stayed onboard. He didn't have to defend the opinions and quotations, which many people viewed as defensible, because, he said, they weren't his. LPGA officials gave him the benefit of the doubt. When gay-rights groups called for Wright's head, or at least an apology, he ignored them; in his view there was nothing to apologize for. He said the story was a "pack of lies"; his network supported him; and the duo of Bentley and McCord, a team valued by CBS, was saved. Later, Wright received a four-year contract extension. The only victim was Helmbreck and her reputation as a reporter, and no one at the network seemed to care about that. "The woman has disappeared, as far as I know," Wright said recently.

Then Ben did a silly thing. The great raconteur didn't stick to his story. On June 13, a month after the incident, at the summer home of Nancy and Jack Whitaker in Bridgehampton, N.Y., during the week of the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, Wright attended an elegant dinner party. Barbara and Jack Nicklaus were there. So was Dan Jenkins, the sportswriter and novelist who helped Wright get his start with CBS in 1973. "I asked him, 'Did you say it?'" Jenkins, a former SI writer, recounted recently. "And he said, 'Of course I said it. But I was granted complete anonymity.' What I don't know is if he was joking. He'd had about two bottles of wine."

Details of the interview emerged in other places. Ken Doig, a veteran tour caddie and a part-time CBS employee, said he eavesdropped on the interview because he couldn't believe what Wright was saying to Helmbreck. Doig, the oldest son of a well-regarded Canadian golfing family, said he likes Wright but that Wright's response to Helmbreck's story was disingenuous. "Her story was accurate," said Doig, who works occasionally for SI as a photographer's assistant. "I heard Ben say boobs. I heard him say lesbianism hurts in getting sponsorships." Doig has worked odd jobs for CBS at the Masters, and at other tournaments, since 1977. Asked why he wanted to come forward in the matter of Wright versus Helmbreck and jeopardize his employment with CBS, Doig said, "I'm a golfer, and golf is a game of integrity. I believe in telling the truth."

When contacted by SI last month, Wright, an incorrigible talker, said that he could not discuss the Helmbreck story without permission from Kenin, and permission was not granted. ("I'm not going to give him the opportunity to talk and get himself in trouble again," Kenin said.) In a brief telephone interview on the subject, Wright characterized Helmbreck as divorced, involved in a custody battle, possibly a lesbian. It was, Wright said, his bad luck to run into her around Mother's Day, when Helmbreck was upset because she wouldn't be able to see her children. Wright described Helmbreck as having a feminist, gay-rights agenda. "I was totally misquoted. She put into my mouth words she told me," Wright said. "She granted me anonymity. She chose to nail me. It's hurt me terribly. It's aged me 10 years. She's a very unhappy woman."

But none of Wright's statements check out. Helmbreck is married-"happily married for 15 years," she says-to an assistant city editor at the News Journal. They have three children. She has been a reporter on the News Journal for more than a decade and has lived in Delaware most of her 43 years. She is currently a features writer and was formerly a TV critic, which is why she was assigned to write about the television coverage of the LPGA Championship. Helmbreck writes often about food and in October wrote a light piece comparing herself with her mock heroine, Martha Stewart, to whom she bears a resemblance. In her 12 years on the News Journal, she has been charged with misquoting someone on only one other occasion. That was in 1990, when actress Kathleen Turner was staying in Wilmington at the Hotel duPont. Helmbreck quoted the hotel manager as saying that Turner was not as attractive in person as she appears on the screen. The manager said he was misquoted; the News Journal backed Helmbreck. For her foray into golf, Helmbreck said her original plan was to write about the differences between women's and men's golf telecasts. Helmbreck says she took notes throughout the interview with Wright and that the entire session was on the record, except when Wright told her it was not. She declined to reveal what was not on the record. SI secured an internal memo from the News Journal that describes the part of the interview that was not on the record. According to the document, Wright said that Helmbreck could use, but not attribute to him, the "fingernail test." According to the memo, Wright said that players with short fingernails are gay, and players with long fingernails are not. Helmbreck made no reference to the fingernail test in her story.

Wright has many supporters, JoAnne Carner among them. The LPGA Hall of Famer said Wright's line about women golfers and their breasts was originally her own, a joking way to explain the differences between men's and women's golf. Dottie Mochrie, an LPGA player, said she couldn't imagine Wright intending to say the things he was quoted as saying. Still, she was surprised by what Wright said at the Oct. 2 opening of a golf course, Cliffs Valley in Travelers Rest, S.C., designed by Wright. The ceremony, attended by 1,500 people, featured an exhibition by Mochrie and Jay Haas, among others. During the introductions Wright mocked Haas for his performance in the Ryder Cup. When he was through, Wright, according to people present, said to the crowd, "This is payback because at dinner last night Jay asked me about lesbians." There was nervous laughter. "I was a little disappointed that it was brought up again," Mochrie says. "I thought he could've been more sensitive."

At this point, more than six months after the interview, Chirkinian recognizes that Helmbreck's story must be at least partially true. "Something must have been said, for it to get into print," he says. Kenin's view appears to have evolved over the past half year. "CBS never said it was a pack of lies," he said recently. "There's a community element to it. She's outside the community. Ben didn't know that at the time. This was a case of one not understanding the other."

Chirkinian said Helmbreck did not understand Wright's sense of humor. "[But] whether Ben Wright was serious or joking, if he admits to [the quotes], he's fired," Chirkinian said. "With our corporate lawyers? Ben would have walked the plank. And to walk the plank for that? I don't think so."

Helmbreck is still in Wilmington, a working reporter. Sometimes when she calls people for a story, they recognize her name. They know she was involved in some messy thing with a golf announcer for CBS. It's frustrating for her. Wright, she says, is a man of his generation, that's all. She has had to live with the consequences. "In this business," she says, "you can be a nut, you can be a drunk, but the one thing you can't be is dishonest." Helmbreck stands by her story. Given the chance, she would write it the same way again.