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After it became absolutely impossible to ignore, and therefore no longer profitable to support him. But what about when it was brought to their attention before

After it became absolutely impossible to ignore, and therefore no longer profitable to support him. But what about when it was brought to their attention before?[1] The story I reported never ran. After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. 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? [1] https://www.thewrap.com/media-enablers-harvey-weinstein-new-york-times https://www.thewrap.com/media-enablers-harvey-weinstein-new-...

danso 9y ago
It's only fair to point out the Waxman's former editor's response: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/harvey-weinstein-sharon-waxman-new-york-times-243600 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/harvey-weinstein-sh... To summarize: He doesn't remember the conversation in which he allegedly argued that Weinstein wasn't a worthy public topic. And he never met with Weinstein at the Times, as Waxman claims. So it's her word against his. But we can as outsiders consider these assertions: > Landman also questioned why “if the Times had been intent on protecting Weinstein, wouldn’t it be odd to send a reporter to pursue this story on two continents, at considerable time and expense?’ From the NYT's response (from the current exec editor, who wasn't at the NYT in 2004): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/reader-center/dean-baquet-sharon-waxman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/reader-center/dean-baquet... > I’m sure Ms. Waxman believes she had a story. But if you read her own description, she did not have anything near what was revealed in our story. Mainly, she had an off-the-record account from one woman. That's not to say that Waxman isn't right on a certain principle: stories don't need to face direct opposition to be "killed". If the NYT had been more open to the idea of Weinstein being a serial abuser, they would have given her more time and resources to pursue evidence that would eventually lead to on-the-record testimony and other hard evidence. But that's not what you said. You simplified all of the NYT's (and others') inaction to an evil villain picking up a phone and making a threat. What do you mean that the current story came about because "it became absolutely impossible to ignore"? Do you think that it all started with tweetstorms from recent victims? The first story in NYT's investigation involved incidents that were decades old. Meaning that nothing became "impossible to ignore" -- ignoring was the status quo for decades. It's very difficult to square your assertion with the fact that the NYT would've needed to throw considerable money at this investigation to even get it off the grounds. Sorry to be an apologist for the NYT, but your simplification does a bit of injustice to what the victims faced in the Weinstein scandal, as if they had been complaining on-the-record and openly for decades and they were ignored because of an elite conspiracy. It appears that what they faced was even worse, threats from their own industry and massive personal shame to the point that it was just easier to keep quiet and sign non-disclosure agreements than to speak out about injustice. And Waxman herself would probably agree to this, as she left the NYT to found her own media outlet, which until the NYT's investigation, seems to have completely ignored Weinstein's scandalous history. In the case of the Indonesia massacre, it's very possible/likely that it was a story that news organizations didn't push hard enough to investigate. That's not at all inconceivable, especially as we see media organizations outright shutting down because of lack of money. But giving your argument the benefit of the doubt, that the media is "consistently doing the government's bidding", then why was it the media that rooted out the Pentagon Papers and the My Lai massacre (the NYT and Sy Hersh specifically for the latter) and published photos that contributed heavily to the public's disillusionment with the war? But to the greater point: it seems ironic to simplify things into a media conspiracy because of something you read from a Chomsky book, in a thread about an article that hints (based on a recently declassified document) at how perversely/tragically complicated world politics is, even in the face of a massacre. To the smaller issue of media complicity, I'd completely agree that that media organizations have the capacity to act maliciously, or at least be too slow/unprepared to respond to injustice. But that's a result of media organizations -- similar to governments -- being complicated. To reduce the factors of a worldwide tragedy to the consequences of a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. caricature pulling all the strings, ultimately does not help in helping people remember history in order to avoid repeating it. edit: I gave Waxman more benefit of the doubt before she recently came to the defense of Matt Damon, who was getting criticized as being complicit to the alleged killing of Waxman's story: https://twitter.com/sharonwaxman/status/917821882556022786 https://twitter.com/sharonwaxman/status/917821882556022786 And yet Waxman, an experienced reporter who was writing for her website (i.e. no constraints from ink/paper limits, or overreaching editors), wrote this about Damon: > The story I reported never ran. > After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. There is no way you intentionally write that about Damon and Crowe, without adding a caveat (e.g. "to vouch for Lambardo as a colleague, though I never asked them about the sexual abuse allegations"), unless you intend to amplify the drama of your own story, i.e. Hollywood's pressure on Waxman. That she only absolves Damon after he gives his side of the story makes me think that she might exaggerate the amount of real evidence she had on Weinstein in 2004 (evidence, again, that she sat on for 12+ years, as someone whose entire livelihood is reporting on Hollywood). But I do agree that the NYT columnist she wrote in response to is "sanctimonious" [0]. Even if that columnist, and his editors, were unaware of Waxman's 2004efforts, they do have current colleagues who cover Hollywood and who most definitely had heard the open secret. I don't agree with you that if the NYT suppressed news about Weinstein out of profit-motive, but I can believe that the NYT could have done more earlier to question someone who happens to be cozy with New York media and media reporters. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/media/harvey-weinsteins-media-enablers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/media/harvey-wei...
- csallen 9y ago
  You should read Manufacturing Consent. I'm merely parroting its arguments, and so will necessarily do a poor job compared to the original. But the claim is not that there's a nefarious conspiracy underfoot. Rather, it's that the simple physics of the system — the incentives and the economics — lead to a sort of de facto propaganda. No conspiracy necessary. He investigates a number of "filters," or ways in which reporting is distorted. For example there's a massive disparity in sources. The US military and corporate America spend vast sums of money and manpower contributing stories and source information that media companies depend on. Another is advertising: newspapers that are not advertiser-funded are much less profitable, and therefore more expensive, and therefore suffer in distribution. Etc. I think there are five in total. Then for each filter, he'll go through countless examples. It's actually quite fascinating. With regard to specific events, I believe he talks about both the Pentagon Papers and the My Lai massacre. IIRC he builds a compelling case for how the powers that be were themselves incentivized to see the end of the Vietnam war. As for Waxman, I don't recall reading in her story that she said her editor was the one who met with Weinstein, so it doesn't surprise me that he denies it was him. It also doesn't seem inconsistent with her story that they'd fund her, a reporter, to do reporting, given that (according to her) they weren't against the story until after it was done. Of course it's entirely possible that she's lying and she made the whole thing up. I'm not a mind reader. But that's missing the point. Chomsky's case doesn't rest on a single story any more than it rests on a conspiracy theory. It doesn't require there to be airtight 100% successful manipulation of the news. Rather, it's a case built on the back of consistent and sustained bias in favor of the government, advertisers, and sources, with hundreds of examples and troves of data.
  - danso 9y ago
    A point which I think illustrates my strongest disagreement: > It also doesn't seem inconsistent with her story that they'd fund her, a reporter, to do reporting, given that (according to her) they weren't against the story until after it was done. That's the wrong, simplistic way to think about things. Like startups and software, stories are not "done" until they are published or put on market. Waxman had a single off-the-record source. That is not a story, that is the beginning of an investigation (as it likely was for the current NYT-Weinstein investigation). Maybe the editors were at fault for not aggressively suspecting fire where there seemed to be smoke, but Waxman had nothing of the sort that the current NYT reporters had -- neither in notes nor draft form -- and for her to suggest so is dishonest, since she would be presenting that evidence in her critique. Again, not having read "Manufacturing Consent", I can't address its specific evidence. But I would love to see what datasets and hypotheses Chomsky uses as proxies to empirically show the ties that you say. Because while data is the plural of anecdote, I'm inclined to believe the inherent nature of data and the politics of its collection means that many of the necessary datasets needed to make those conclusion do not exist in a comprehensive form. To argue that the powers-that-be, including the media, were "incentivized" to see the end of the Vietnam War may be the actual objective reality. Or it may be a conclusion easy to reach in retrospect of history (i.e. the Vietnam War being a political disaster) by cherry-picking the "data". What would be the evidence/data that could conclusively show the null hypothesis here? And for that matter, why don't the "powers-that-be" include the U.S. presidents (and all of their corporate overloads) at the time whose careers were devastated by the negative perception of the Vietnam War? I agree that Chomsky's hypothesis doesn't require 100% successful manipulation of the news. So what's the accepted success rate? 75%? 50%? When is the success rate so small that it's indistinguishable from coincidences in a random universe, or one in which the actors or much more independent and the factors much more complicated? Maybe the answer -- like the hypothesis "Because God made it like so" -- is truly impossible to discern. But the hypothesis is still harmful because in a universe in which the hypothesis is false, it causes us to overlook the more mundane events and systemic factors that precipitate terrible things. Instead, we unconsciously absolve ourselves of action by assigning blame to conspiracy and collusion at a scale too great for us to act upon.

danso 9y ago

It's only fair to point out the Waxman's former editor's response: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/harvey-weinstein-sharon-waxman-new-york-times-243600 http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/09/harvey-weinstein-sh... To summarize: He doesn't remember the conversation in which he allegedly argued that Weinstein wasn't a worthy public topic. And he never met with Weinstein at the Times, as Waxman claims. So it's her word against his. But we can as outsiders consider these assertions: > Landman also questioned why “if the Times had been intent on protecting Weinstein, wouldn’t it be odd to send a reporter to pursue this story on two continents, at considerable time and expense?’ From the NYT's response (from the current exec editor, who wasn't at the NYT in 2004): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/reader-center/dean-baquet-sharon-waxman.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/reader-center/dean-baquet... > I’m sure Ms. Waxman believes she had a story. But if you read her own description, she did not have anything near what was revealed in our story. Mainly, she had an off-the-record account from one woman. That's not to say that Waxman isn't right on a certain principle: stories don't need to face direct opposition to be "killed". If the NYT had been more open to the idea of Weinstein being a serial abuser, they would have given her more time and resources to pursue evidence that would eventually lead to on-the-record testimony and other hard evidence. But that's not what you said. You simplified all of the NYT's (and others') inaction to an evil villain picking up a phone and making a threat. What do you mean that the current story came about because "it became absolutely impossible to ignore"? Do you think that it all started with tweetstorms from recent victims? The first story in NYT's investigation involved incidents that were decades old. Meaning that nothing became "impossible to ignore" -- ignoring was the status quo for decades. It's very difficult to square your assertion with the fact that the NYT would've needed to throw considerable money at this investigation to even get it off the grounds. Sorry to be an apologist for the NYT, but your simplification does a bit of injustice to what the victims faced in the Weinstein scandal, as if they had been complaining on-the-record and openly for decades and they were ignored because of an elite conspiracy. It appears that what they faced was even worse, threats from their own industry and massive personal shame to the point that it was just easier to keep quiet and sign non-disclosure agreements than to speak out about injustice. And Waxman herself would probably agree to this, as she left the NYT to found her own media outlet, which until the NYT's investigation, seems to have completely ignored Weinstein's scandalous history. In the case of the Indonesia massacre, it's very possible/likely that it was a story that news organizations didn't push hard enough to investigate. That's not at all inconceivable, especially as we see media organizations outright shutting down because of lack of money. But giving your argument the benefit of the doubt, that the media is "consistently doing the government's bidding", then why was it the media that rooted out the Pentagon Papers and the My Lai massacre (the NYT and Sy Hersh specifically for the latter) and published photos that contributed heavily to the public's disillusionment with the war? But to the greater point: it seems ironic to simplify things into a media conspiracy because of something you read from a Chomsky book, in a thread about an article that hints (based on a recently declassified document) at how perversely/tragically complicated world politics is, even in the face of a massacre. To the smaller issue of media complicity, I'd completely agree that that media organizations have the capacity to act maliciously, or at least be too slow/unprepared to respond to injustice. But that's a result of media organizations -- similar to governments -- being complicated. To reduce the factors of a worldwide tragedy to the consequences of a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. caricature pulling all the strings, ultimately does not help in helping people remember history in order to avoid repeating it. edit: I gave Waxman more benefit of the doubt before she recently came to the defense of Matt Damon, who was getting criticized as being complicit to the alleged killing of Waxman's story: https://twitter.com/sharonwaxman/status/917821882556022786 https://twitter.com/sharonwaxman/status/917821882556022786 And yet Waxman, an experienced reporter who was writing for her website (i.e. no constraints from ink/paper limits, or overreaching editors), wrote this about Damon: > The story I reported never ran. > After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. There is no way you intentionally write that about Damon and Crowe, without adding a caveat (e.g. "to vouch for Lambardo as a colleague, though I never asked them about the sexual abuse allegations"), unless you intend to amplify the drama of your own story, i.e. Hollywood's pressure on Waxman. That she only absolves Damon after he gives his side of the story makes me think that she might exaggerate the amount of real evidence she had on Weinstein in 2004 (evidence, again, that she sat on for 12+ years, as someone whose entire livelihood is reporting on Hollywood). But I do agree that the NYT columnist she wrote in response to is "sanctimonious" [0]. Even if that columnist, and his editors, were unaware of Waxman's 2004efforts, they do have current colleagues who cover Hollywood and who most definitely had heard the open secret. I don't agree with you that if the NYT suppressed news about Weinstein out of profit-motive, but I can believe that the NYT could have done more earlier to question someone who happens to be cozy with New York media and media reporters. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/media/harvey-weinsteins-media-enablers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/media/harvey-wei...

csallen 9y ago
You should read Manufacturing Consent. I'm merely parroting its arguments, and so will necessarily do a poor job compared to the original. But the claim is not that there's a nefarious conspiracy underfoot. Rather, it's that the simple physics of the system — the incentives and the economics — lead to a sort of de facto propaganda. No conspiracy necessary. He investigates a number of "filters," or ways in which reporting is distorted. For example there's a massive disparity in sources. The US military and corporate America spend vast sums of money and manpower contributing stories and source information that media companies depend on. Another is advertising: newspapers that are not advertiser-funded are much less profitable, and therefore more expensive, and therefore suffer in distribution. Etc. I think there are five in total. Then for each filter, he'll go through countless examples. It's actually quite fascinating. With regard to specific events, I believe he talks about both the Pentagon Papers and the My Lai massacre. IIRC he builds a compelling case for how the powers that be were themselves incentivized to see the end of the Vietnam war. As for Waxman, I don't recall reading in her story that she said her editor was the one who met with Weinstein, so it doesn't surprise me that he denies it was him. It also doesn't seem inconsistent with her story that they'd fund her, a reporter, to do reporting, given that (according to her) they weren't against the story until after it was done. Of course it's entirely possible that she's lying and she made the whole thing up. I'm not a mind reader. But that's missing the point. Chomsky's case doesn't rest on a single story any more than it rests on a conspiracy theory. It doesn't require there to be airtight 100% successful manipulation of the news. Rather, it's a case built on the back of consistent and sustained bias in favor of the government, advertisers, and sources, with hundreds of examples and troves of data.
- danso 9y ago
  A point which I think illustrates my strongest disagreement: > It also doesn't seem inconsistent with her story that they'd fund her, a reporter, to do reporting, given that (according to her) they weren't against the story until after it was done. That's the wrong, simplistic way to think about things. Like startups and software, stories are not "done" until they are published or put on market. Waxman had a single off-the-record source. That is not a story, that is the beginning of an investigation (as it likely was for the current NYT-Weinstein investigation). Maybe the editors were at fault for not aggressively suspecting fire where there seemed to be smoke, but Waxman had nothing of the sort that the current NYT reporters had -- neither in notes nor draft form -- and for her to suggest so is dishonest, since she would be presenting that evidence in her critique. Again, not having read "Manufacturing Consent", I can't address its specific evidence. But I would love to see what datasets and hypotheses Chomsky uses as proxies to empirically show the ties that you say. Because while data is the plural of anecdote, I'm inclined to believe the inherent nature of data and the politics of its collection means that many of the necessary datasets needed to make those conclusion do not exist in a comprehensive form. To argue that the powers-that-be, including the media, were "incentivized" to see the end of the Vietnam War may be the actual objective reality. Or it may be a conclusion easy to reach in retrospect of history (i.e. the Vietnam War being a political disaster) by cherry-picking the "data". What would be the evidence/data that could conclusively show the null hypothesis here? And for that matter, why don't the "powers-that-be" include the U.S. presidents (and all of their corporate overloads) at the time whose careers were devastated by the negative perception of the Vietnam War? I agree that Chomsky's hypothesis doesn't require 100% successful manipulation of the news. So what's the accepted success rate? 75%? 50%? When is the success rate so small that it's indistinguishable from coincidences in a random universe, or one in which the actors or much more independent and the factors much more complicated? Maybe the answer -- like the hypothesis "Because God made it like so" -- is truly impossible to discern. But the hypothesis is still harmful because in a universe in which the hypothesis is false, it causes us to overlook the more mundane events and systemic factors that precipitate terrible things. Instead, we unconsciously absolve ourselves of action by assigning blame to conspiracy and collusion at a scale too great for us to act upon.