How a gaggle of top reporters exposed an epidemic of sexual peccadillos in the USA
A Raindance film festival event.
New York Times award-winning reporter Jim Gutenberg was in a one-hour live interview, with a Q and A session at the end of the event explaining how the #METOO campaign led to the exposure of Harvey Weinstein as a totally unacceptable sexual predator. It is difficult to expose these people and there is always more than one side to a story but Jim who has won the Daniel Pearl Prize for Investigative Journalism amongst many other awards, worked with a growing team of journalists to sieve out fact from fiction and amass enough evidence to break the story to the world including via Sky, BBC, CNN and many other media platforms. As we all know this led to trials and imprisonment and sanctions as well as many other women who felt it was worth the high stakes, some feeling already marginalized coming forward and saying METOO.
Weinstein hired a Private Investigator to pose with reporters as one of their group to try and get information on what the National Enquirer was running on the subject of his behaviour and then to try and pay off women who were selling their stories and exposing Weinstein. Jim said his group working on these stories on the New York Times started as 7 and quickly grew to 17.
Initially when the stories broke there was a frozen type of reaction where even in top New York and other clubs, where people read the same papers and know each other they did not discuss what they had learned. Then there was a “slow explosion” and amongst those at Sunset Tower and elsewhere gradually people came back to the paper they had almost disowned and started talking. Ashley Judd and Gwyneth Paltrow came on board with their own stories, and there were so many tales coming in, some had to be “let go of”.
Jim was personally investigating the role of the National Enquirer also in relation to Donald Trump and the people who were trying to suppress reports there. Stormy Daniels was paid by Trump’s lawyer to keep mum which was considered to be part of an illegal campaign. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to being involved.
The lady interviewer then asked Jim if the floodgates had been now been opened too far on these stories…anonymous accusers with no corroborating witnesses possibly seeking private payouts etc? She mentioned the case of Jimmy Saville. The liberal elite In New York failed initially to know what was happening in Middle America. They were surprised to know that Trump had a 7 per cent chance of becoming president in the election and yet Trump did win. His sexual indiscretions have been a feast for the media as they seem to go on and on though I have to say women who did not say No to him and enjoyed his flirtations with them because of who he was even very many years ago sold out to allegations about his sexually licentious nature with no remorse and probably financial gain.
Jim finished his talk by saying that if you are called a traitor or enemies of the people as journalists, it is always a worry. If someone is going to turn up at your house making accusations it would be very bad. War correspondent journalism can also be controversial. All writers and reporters and media people want to live up to what is expected of them. Sometimes this is very rewarding. Sometimes it is tricky.
Penny Nair Price