When I mentioned something as an aside during the latest episode of They Stand Corrected, I did not expect the outpouring of curiosity and compassionate concern that followed.
If you haven’t yet heard the episode, here it is. The mention comes after the introductory section about a prominent figure at the disastrous New York Times.
What I said:
Before a tweet sparked the 2017 #MeToo movement, I was a columnist for Time. I wrote a piece about having been sexually harassed by a woman at the start of my career. People sometimes abuse power. It's a matter of who has power in any given situation. Men have had more power in workplaces, so there are more instances of men abusing it.
I didn’t mention it in previous newsletters about this episode. But I appreciate the influx of messages! The experience left an impression of course, but it was long ago and I’m fine. For those interested, here’s the Time column.
And here’s an excerpt, in which I described some of what the woman in charge of me did. At the time, she had all the power.
She informed me that she liked to work late at night — well past midnight, when no one else was there. From our first interactions, she began asking me when I was going to take her out. Then, she informed me that she had decided we were going to have sex. She spoke graphically about my body and asked me to draw pictures of myself naked. When I declined, saying that wasn’t appropriate, she drew what she imagined my body looks like and asked me to tell her how accurate it was.
These kinds of experiences are far more common for men than many people realize. I also wrote about how it’s different from what so many women experience.
In this episode, it came up in the context of discussing certain lessons the media must learn from looking back at #MeToo coverage — particularly the tremendously flawed “reporting” about former NBC host Matt Lauer.
Farrow v. Lauer
A public battle between two former NBC employees serves as a window into the toxic mess of big media. In the new episode of They Stand Corrected: Matt Lauer v. Ronan Farrow.
I discussed how some news agencies violated basic journalistic standards by declaring certain women to be his “victims” without saying “alleged,” and how the media ignores complexities of big stories by giving in to simple binaries.
I shared an important moment from an event I did in New York with the fantastic Tarana Burke, founder of MeToo.
Also in this episode: why “youngism” is no excuse for journalistic failures, and how the Pulitzers keep rewarding so-called “journalists” with ties to Hamas. Speaking of which, here’s my new column for The Times of Israel.
JL
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