Without a victim willing to go on the record, what story do you think the reporters should have written?
Waiting/hoping for someone else to blow the whistle first isn’t a good strategy for solving problems. I think that is the point taitin is making here.
I suppose in this particular case, the reporters likely had reason to believe Conyers was up to no good (based on rumors or private conversations of bad behavior). They could have taken the initiative to dig deeper and find out more information… ask the victims if they would be willing to go public with the incidents.
That ‘taking initiative’ part is key here…
I heard on the radio he held meetings wearing only his underwear! Eeew.
And yes, if female reporters were ‘touched’ in the elevator and talked to other female reporters and found out they were also ‘touched’ wouldn’t that have been a story? Isn’t it their JOB to report on bad behaving Congress people?
I really enjoy the Longform podcast and listented to the Jodi Kantor interview which I definitely recommend. It was very enlightening to listen to her explain that she has an agenda in her investigative reporting and that she and her partner chose HW based on rumors and stories. The media (both right leaning and left leaning) picks and chooses.
But note that reporters had been going after Weinstein for YEARS without getting a story.
Let’s not forget the harassers within the news organizations, who had/have the power to green light or kill stories.
And, needing victims who are willing (& able re: NDA) to go on the record.
Highly recommend that podcast interview with Kantor mentioned up thread!
That is such a target rich environment that I don’t think they’d have the time and resources to investigate all of the creepy members of congress. Seriously.
These things tend to come up when someone is running for office/being evaluated for an appointment (hello Roy Moore, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain etc), or when someone comes forward on their own or evidence comes out some other way (hello Al Franken, John Conyers, Dennis Hastert, Joe Barton, Tim Murphy, Anthony Weiner etc).
It would be those reporters jobs to write about it for exactly as long as it took to publish the piece. Then THEY are the news instead of the reporters. And everyone would see them as such ever after. Plus, I don’t know if they would have even had any impact. We have a president who admits to regular sexual assault and it had no consequence with his voters. So they’d ruin their careers for no gain.
If the reporters were being fondled, they could have found women in his office who were being fondled as well. It’s not their job to consider whether the voters will care or not. That’s up to the voters. I don’t like the way those who work for media manipulate what the great unwashed masses get to learn about or not. I don’t understand why the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t revealed early on, like as soon as Trump announced his candidacy. Someone at the network held on to it to spring it on the public when it suited their agenda.
It’s not the media’s job to decide what we voters need to know or not. If the information is accurate it needs to get out there.
The Jodi Kantor interview reveals how much of an investment it was on the part of the New York Times to investigate Weinstein. Kantor and Twomey had been working on the story since May, and in the weeks before it was published, the Times was under enormous pressure from the Weinstein machine and its lawyers. In other words, producing a story like that is the opposite of simple.
Here’s the Jodi Kantor link again: https://longform.org/podcast
(scroll down to the, currently, third podcast)
Yes, and the Washington Post worked months on the Moore story. I realize that newspapers are going broke (although with Bezos owning the Post that’s unlikely for them), but the whole point of a news gathering organization is to gather news. That job is more important for a member of Congress than for a Hollywood mogul. Members or potential members of Congress should get even more scrutiny.
I imagine that people in news circles in Washington have a pretty good idea who in the Congress are harassers and whose bad behavior cost the taxpayers 17 million dollars.
I’m not sure the Weinstein story is less important. It is stunning in scope and details, and shows how a corporate abuser can cover their tracks and hide in plain sight.
I do think both Paul Ryan & Nancy Pelosi are carefully not casting stones. They know a lot more about this problem in their caucuses than they ever want us to know.
You have no idea if the reporters simply “heard” about him or had any experience. You have no idea if they tried to get some women to talk about this, but nobody would go on record. One congressional aide said that she took a very small payout to avoid going on the record because even if she were believed, she did not think she would ever get another job on the hill as other congressmen might feel she was not a team player (even if they weren’t doing anything wrong). It is not nearly as easy as you seem to think it is to tell these stories.
I believe the Weinstein story is spectacularly important. It opened the floodgates. You might say, well, it could have been a story about a member of Congress instead. But maybe it couldn’t. The Weinstein reporters benefited from the fact that Weinstein had access to thousands of potential victims; only (what now seems like) a small percentage of them had to speak up for the story to be written.
Moreover, even though Weinstein was powerful, there are other places for an aspiring actor/writer/theater tech to work. But there is no other Congress; if a story about a Congressman fizzled, any named sources would never work again in Congress.
So the Weinstein story was easier to get. There were more potential sources, and they had a somewhat bigger incentive to speak up. Nonetheless, the Weinstein story still was extremely difficult to get. In the podcast, Kantor talks about how as she was trying to get the story, she felt like she was stepping through a minefield filled with the corpses of all the other good reporters who tried to get it and failed.
But she’s okay taking a payout in exchange for clearing the slate… smh
I don’t know if it was easier for the Weinstein women. Lots of them just left the business completely. It is pretty awful for all women.
When I was in my early 30s, the guy who sat next to me at work for the past year (I was a consultant, he was a client) moved to a new position in a different building. A couple days later my phone rang in the middle of the night – it was an obscene phone call. But… I recognized his voice, even though he tried to hide it. I hung up on him. Thought about it, then when to my boss at the consulting firm the next day and told him the story. Told him I DIDN’T want him to make waves with the client, as I felt I could handle this bozo on my own (and it was just a phone call). And I definitely felt the pressure to not “rock the boat” with a client for the sake of my career. But I wanted someone to know in case it got weirder somehow or continued. My boss responded, “Oh <guy’s name=”"> would NEVER do that." That pissed me off, for sure. Next time I was in the guy’s building I stopped by his desk “just to say hi”. He burrowed into his keyboard and would not even look up. I felt satisfied – he knew that I knew, I think.</guy’s>
Several years later I was sharing a golf cart with my old boss at a charity event. He said, “Hey, I want to apologize for not believing you all those years ago about <guy’s name=”"> phone call all those years ago. I do think he could have and probably did do it." </guy’s>
But… just telling the story to explain why women don’t tell. We have been able to be pretty confident that no one is going to have our back in the executive ranks. They don’t want bad publicity or anything that affects their relationship with customers – sweeping it under the rug is in the corporation (or school or church or whatever’s) best financial interest, so that is what they will do.
Why are you shaking your head? She should volunteer to go on the record, even though she (1) wouldn’t be believed and (2) she would be attacked? You demand a lot of other people. We call accusers “brave” because we know what they’re setting themselves up for, and it’s not pretty. I’m not willing to insist that anyone does it.
I’m shaking my head at the idea that staying quiet has a monetary value.
People who do that are putting their jobs ahead of the harm to future victims. When people do that in industry, that is keep quiet about a toxic spill or a product that could cause harm they are excoriated for keeping quiet.
Easier for some of the Weinstein women to speak up, because Weinstein no longer had a hold over them, I meant to say.