The liberal left
New York Times knew what Harvey Weinstein was up to.
Hollywood golden boys, Matt Damon and Russel Crowe, appeared to have known what Harvey Weinstein was up to.
The liberal left media machine thought nothing of it, and decided to silence a story from Sharon Waxman that would have spared many young women
from being subjected to Weinstein's sexual power trips.
The Gateway Pundit reports...
The New York Times had the story all the way back in 2004 and squashed it after Weinstein himself appeared at the NYT headquarters and muscled the paper into silence.
Sharon Waxman is the founder of The Wrap and a former New York Times reporter. She said she "gagged" when she read Jim Rutenberg's sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the "media enablers" who kept this story from the public for decades.
Waxman wrote about having the Weinstein scoop when she was a new reporter at the New York Times back in 2004 but after Weinstein, Matt Damon and Russel Crowe pressured her to stop her hit piece, the story was gutted.
Zerohedge reports that Sharon Waxman, the founding editor of
The Wrap and formerly an entertainment industry reporter at the
Times, revealed in
a blog post published Sunday that she had reported out a similar story back in 2004, only for it to be quashed by top editors at the paper, who, instead of encouraging her to pursue the story, questioned its value and relevance after Weinstein had reportedly made a personal appeal demanding that it not be run.
Waxman applauded the two reporters who broke the story, saying she knows how difficult reporting on powerful industry figures like Weinstein can be. But she could only scoff at a column written by Times' media columnist Jim Rutenberg blasting Weinstein's "media enablers", who had reportedly turned a blind eye to his problematic behavior for decades. After all, she said, when it comes to keeping stories about Weinstein's disturbing behavior from seeing the light of day, the Times was as complicit as anyone.
Via
The Wrap...
I applaud The New York Times and writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for getting the story in print. I'm sure it was a long and difficult road.
But I simply gagged when I read Jim Rutenberg's sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the "media enablers" who kept this story from the public for decades.
"Until now," he puffed, "no journalistic outfit had been able, or perhaps willing, to nail the details and hit publish."
That's right, Jim. No one - including The New York Times.
Waxman recounted her own efforts ten years ago to expose Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual harassment...
I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein's women needs, among other things.
As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.
I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.
At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: "Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. 'I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,' he said of his work for the film company. 'It cannot be that they hired me because I'm a friend.'"
Zerohedge notes that Waxman shared how she had convinced one of Weinstein's victims to overcome her fears about violating an NDA to discuss her history with Weinstein.
"I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off."
But despite Waxman's best efforts, the story about Weinstein that she had reported never ran; instead, allegations of sexual harassment were removed from the piece, which was eventually buried in the culture section, after Weinstein launched a wide-ranging campaign to pressure the paper's editors and owners - a campaign that involved personalized phone calls from celebrities like Matt Damon, who vouched for Weinstein's character.
Damon and Crowe's intervention into the
NYT's editorial process was not the only violation of journalistic ethics, as Waxman reveals that Weinstein was allowed to visit the
New York Times newsroom to make his appeal...
I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall.
But I had the facts, and this was the Times. Right?
Wrong. The story was stripped of any reference to sexual favors or coercion and buried on the inside of the Culture section, an obscure story about Miramax firing an Italian executive. Who cared?
The Times' then-culture editor Jon Landman, now an editor-at-large for Bloomberg, thought the story was unimportant, asking me why it mattered.
Zerohedge continues...
Eight years after Waxman left the Times, the shifting cultural climate created the conditions for Weinstein to be deposed, as rumors circulated that his brother may have been behind the Times story.
Also, with the New Yorker reportedly researching its own Weinstein expose, the Times was effectively forced to act lest it miss out on one of the biggest entertainment industry scoops of the year.
However, the Times isn't the only media outlet that caved to pressure Weinstein. As Page Six reported Sunday, New York Magazine fumbled its own Weinstein exposed after Weinstein reportedly had the story killed.
Even after news broke, Saturday Night Live - which has made countless cheap jokes about allegations of sexual harassment pertaining to President Donald Trump - was conspicuously mute about Weinstein.
Unsurprisingly, journalists blasted Waxman for her column, questioning why she didn't publish the story herself after founding the Wrap in 2009. Waxman clarified that five years had passed, and many of her original sources had disappeared. Furthermore, she was preoccupied building and running her own media business - an endeavor that soaked up all of her free time, and then some.
If nothing else, Waxman's disclosure is a valuable primer in influence peddling by powerful figures. More importantly. It's also an important reminder that, when the collective decision was made by a cohort of powerful media interests to turn a blind eye to Weinstein's misdeed, the Times was just as complicit as its peers.
Waxman discussed her Weinstein sotry with Tucker Carlson...
Comment: Before getting fired from his own company, Weinstein apparently reached out to top Hollywood executives for support (including Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav, former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, NBCUniversal vice chair Ron Meyer, WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel and CAA managing partner Kevin Huvane). Here's the
letter he sent:
My board is thinking of firing me. All I'm asking, is let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counseling. Whether it be in a facility or somewhere else, allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance. A lot of the allegations are false as you know but given therapy and counseling as other people have done, I think I'd be able to get there.
I could really use your support or just your honesty if you can't support me.
But if you can, I need you to send a letter to my private gmail address. The letter would only go to the board and no one else. We believe what the board is trying to do is not only wrong but might be illegal and would destroy the company. If you could write this letter backing me, getting me the help and time away I need, and also stating your opposition to the board firing me, it would help me a lot. I am desperate for your help. Just give me the time to have therapy. Do not let me be fired. If the industry supports me, that is all I need.
With all due respect, I need the letter today.
And it wasn't just media and the Hollywood scene running damage control for Weinstein. Apparently the NYPD was ready to
arrest Weinstein in 2015 after an Italian model accused him of groping her. Weinstein had invited her to his office. When she arrived, the assistant left, Weinstein asked her if her breasts were real, then groped her, stuck his hand under her skirt, and asked for a kiss, according to the model, Ambra Battilana. She left 31 minutes after arriving in the building, according to surveillance cameras, and a friend took her to the nearest police station. Before she could make a "controlled call" to Weinstein, suggested by the police in the hope that he would incriminate himself, he called her, asking for another meeting. At the detectives' urging, she agreed, but wore a wire. According to an NYPD commander, he "basically apologized", then invited her up to his room - "Just to show you how incorrigible the guy is".
Ambra Battilana excused herself to use the restroom and she was met by a detective from the special victims unit, which had been using two cellphones to record this March 28, 2015, meeting in the bar/restaurant at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in downtown Manhattan. Battilana seemed close to panic. The detective promised her that she would be safely under protective surveillance if she went along with Weinstein's request.
Battilana agreed and headed upstairs with Weinstein. The detectives were close behind, ready to move in immediately if Weinstein tried to grope her again as she alleged he had earlier. He would have been caught in the act.
But Battilana suddenly backed away and departed.
"She got scared," the police commander says.
Battilana returned downstairs. Weinstein joined her. The detectives moved in. They took him away for questioning that immediately ceased when he asked for a lawyer, in particular an attorney from the firm whose partners included former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A Weinstein spokeswoman would deny the allegations.
The detectives were still able to bring the Manhattan district attorney's office a case that was considerably stronger than is routinely needed to convict less illustrious gropers in the subway.
...
But by several accounts the Manhattan district attorney's office was still feeling the aftershocks of the disastrous Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in 2011. ... Since then, the DA had seemed to knowledgeable observers to be leery of another high-profile debacle. That worry could have only increased as prosecutors learned that Battilana had accused a wealthy elderly boyfriend in Italy of forcing her into sex when she was just 17. She had also figured in the prosecution of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, testifying that she had witnessed one of his "bunga bunga" sex parties when she was 19.
At the prospect of her now figuring as the victim in a case against a high-profile figure such as Harvey Weinstein, the DA's office seemed to hesitate. The DA's office asked the SVU questions and the SVU answered them and the DA's office asked more questions that the SVU also answered.
"They knocked it around about a week, back and forth," the NYPD commander says.
The DA's office finally reached an official determination, following what a spokesman rightly described as "a thorough investigation."
"After analyzing the available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported," the spokeswoman announced.
The NYPD commander offers a different analysis based on long experience.
"When you say no after a week, it's not usually over the facts," he suggests.
Hesitation by prosecutors does not engender confidence in victims. Battilana had initially seemed sure of a speedy resolution, posting on Instagram three days after the alleged groping, "Don't stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare." She seems to have afterward lost faith in the system and is said to have reached a monetary settlement with Weinstein, apparently leaving town so she was unavailable.
"They paid her off," says someone with inside knowledge of the Weinstein response to the incident.
Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is working on a documentary on Roger Ailes, says this is
just the beginning:
"Anybody who's in the entertainment business or in the movie business had heard rumors [about Weinstein], but you know you have to be careful. The trick is proving that the rumors are true, but yeah, this had been one of those stories you kept hearing about and kept wondering," he said.
...
"There are lots of rumors of men in power who abuse that power for sexual favors. And there are a lot of beautiful women in the movie industry," Gibney said. "There are a lot of rumors swirling around a lot of people both in the present and the past."
...
"It's not just Hollywood, I think it's power in general. There's a reason why the powerful escape scrutiny for so long - it's because people want something from them. If you're an actress, you want to get a role, if you're a producer, you want a deal, and along the way people start making little compromises that end up being one big compromise. I don't think it's limited to Hollywood. We're talking about Scientology, we're talking about the Catholic Church. Wherever there's power, there's abuse of power, and there's a kind of collective responsibility for allowing those abuses to continue."
Comment: Before getting fired from his own company, Weinstein apparently reached out to top Hollywood executives for support (including Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav, former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, NBCUniversal vice chair Ron Meyer, WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel and CAA managing partner Kevin Huvane). Here's the letter he sent: And it wasn't just media and the Hollywood scene running damage control for Weinstein. Apparently the NYPD was ready to arrest Weinstein in 2015 after an Italian model accused him of groping her. Weinstein had invited her to his office. When she arrived, the assistant left, Weinstein asked her if her breasts were real, then groped her, stuck his hand under her skirt, and asked for a kiss, according to the model, Ambra Battilana. She left 31 minutes after arriving in the building, according to surveillance cameras, and a friend took her to the nearest police station. Before she could make a "controlled call" to Weinstein, suggested by the police in the hope that he would incriminate himself, he called her, asking for another meeting. At the detectives' urging, she agreed, but wore a wire. According to an NYPD commander, he "basically apologized", then invited her up to his room - "Just to show you how incorrigible the guy is". Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is working on a documentary on Roger Ailes, says this is just the beginning: