Dylan Howard (Radar Online) accused of sexual misconduct
Dec 6, 2017 17:06:51 GMT
TonyR, Snow White, and 4 more like this
Post by respect77 on Dec 6, 2017 17:06:51 GMT
"Karma is a bitch!", I would say (if I really believed in karma). LOL.
Anyway, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Dylan Howard is the chief editor of tabloids like Radar Online and the National Enquirer. Publications which routinely post slanderous BS about MJ, especially when it comes to the allegations. Radar Online were the ones who started the false FBI files and false child porn stories about MJ which is until today quoted by a lot of ignorant people.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/ap-exclusive-top-gossip-editor-accused-of-sexual-misconduct/2017/12/05/49e63e46-d9fb-11e7-a241-0848315642d0_story.html?utm_term=.3a4d01c7d255
On somewhat related news, there is an essay in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein. It is a long article, but MJ is mentioned in the part where they describe how Weinstein used tabloid media connections to generate stories about others in order to distract from his scandals.
Dylan Howard is also involved in Weinstein's scandal as he tried to dig up dirt on Weinstein's accusers to help Weinstein.
I post that part here, but the article is longer:
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html
Anyway, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. Dylan Howard is the chief editor of tabloids like Radar Online and the National Enquirer. Publications which routinely post slanderous BS about MJ, especially when it comes to the allegations. Radar Online were the ones who started the false FBI files and false child porn stories about MJ which is until today quoted by a lot of ignorant people.
AP Exclusive: Top gossip editor accused of sexual misconduct
By Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz | AP December 5 at 6:46 PM
NEW YORK — The top editor for the National Enquirer, Us Weekly and other major gossip publications openly described his sexual partners in the newsroom, discussed female employees’ sex lives and forced women to watch or listen to pornographic material, former employees told The Associated Press.
The behavior by Dylan Howard, currently the chief content officer of American Media Inc., occurred while he was running the company’s Los Angeles office, according to men and women who worked there. Howard’s self-proclaimed nickname was “Dildo,” a phallus-shaped sex toy, the former employees said. His conduct led to an internal inquiry in 2012 by an outside consultant, and former employees said he stopped working out of the L.A. office after the inquiry.
Howard quit soon after the report was completed, but the company rehired him one year later with a promotion that landed him in the company’s main office in New York. It was not clear whether Howard faced any discipline over the accusations. AP is not aware of any sexual harassment allegations involving Howard since he was rehired.
The AP spoke with 12 former employees who knew about the investigation into Howard’s behavior, though not all were aware of every detail. The outside investigator hired to examine complaints about Howard’s behavior also confirmed to AP that he completed a report.
In a brief phone interview with the AP, Howard characterized the ex-employees’ claims as “baseless.”
American Media said in a statement Tuesday evening that Howard “has the full support of AMI and its executives.” It said since Howard was rehired, “he has continued to have the respect of his peers and colleagues.”
A lawyer for American Media confirmed Tuesday that an outside investigator was hired to look into two employees’ claims about Howard’s behavior.
The lawyer, Cam Stracher, said the investigation did not show serious wrongdoing. Stracher confirmed that one employee had complained that Howard said he wanted to create a Facebook account for her vagina, but Stracher said Howard said that never happened.
“It was determined that there was some what you would call as horsing around outside the office, going to bars and things that are not uncommon in the media business,” Stracher said, “but none of it rose to the level of harassment that would require termination.”
American Media publishes the National Enquirer, RadarOnline, Star and other gossip publications and websites. In March the company purchased the glossy Us Weekly magazine for a reported $100 million, significantly boosting its readership among women.
In his job, Howard oversees those newsrooms.
AMI spokesman Jon Hammond described the two employees who had formally complained about Howard’s alleged behavior as “disgruntled.”
“The investigation described an environment where employees mixed socially outside the office — sometimes at bars — but found no direct support for the allegations of harassment made by the two complainants,” Hammond said in an email.
Most of the former employees spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements, sometimes as part of severance packages.
Two former employees, one a senior manager and another a reporter in the L.A. office, agreed to be publicly identified to discuss Howard’s behavior.
“The behavior that Dylan displayed and the way he was and the way the company dealt with it — I just think that it has to be made public because it’s completely unacceptable,” said Maxine “Max” Page, a former senior editor at RadarOnline. She complained to the human resources department about Howard’s behavior on behalf of two female reporters.
Howard made inappropriate comments to and about one of those women, Page and six other ex-employees said. Howard told employees in the newsroom he wanted to create a Facebook account on behalf of the woman’s vagina, commented on her sex life and forced her and other female employees to either watch or listen to graphic recordings of sex involving celebrities despite there being no professional rationale for doing so, they said.
A former senior editor recalled Howard wrongly claimed during a newsroom meeting that the woman had had sex with a journalism source and praised her for it, saying she needed to “do what you need” to get a story.
The editor said: “He encouraged her to have sex with people for information.”
The woman Howard was discussing confirmed these and other incidents to the AP but declined to be identified.
Page and four other employees recounted instances in which Howard talked about his own sexual exploits, including descriptions of his partners’ physical attributes.
Stracher, the company lawyer, said no one interviewed by the outside investigator complained about Howard’s handling of pornographic material. Stracher said there was nothing inherently inappropriate about that in the celebrity news business.
Stracher also said no one complained to the investigator about Howard’s alleged encouragement of a reporter to sleep with news sources.
Another former reporter, Liz Crokin, said she was also harassed by Howard, including once when he asked whether she was “going to be walking the streets tonight” on a day she wore heels to work.
Page and Crokin, like many of the other former employees who spoke to AP, were laid off by the company during waves of downsizing at AMI. The others who left the company said they did so by choice.
American Media regularly asked exiting employees to sign nondisclosure agreements that prohibit them from disclosing confidential information or disparaging company executives.
Many of the former employees who described Howard’s behavior said they decided to do so after the New Yorker and other news organizations published emails in recent weeks showing that Howard had worked with movie producer Harvey Weinstein to undermine allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein.
The emails showed that Howard had dispatched a reporter to uncover derogatory information about an actress who had accused Weinstein of rape, and then shared that information with Weinstein. Howard has said he pursued the information as part of due diligence before entering into a business relationship with Weinstein. Weinstein, who has denied allegations of non-consensual sex, has maintained he was passing along a news tip to Howard that was never published.
After the 2012 investigation into Howard’s conduct in Los Angeles, two of the ex-employees said they were told by a manager that Howard was barred from the Los Angeles office. The employees said he worked from home after that. Stracher, the company lawyer, said Howard was given no such order to stay away from the office.
Shortly after the report was issued, Howard took a new job with another company.
It’s unclear what the report concluded or whether Howard faced any disciplinary action.
The AP was unable to obtain a copy of the report. Its author, Philip Deming, confirmed he wrote a report but said he could not talk about what he found or the recommendations he made.
Page, the manager whose complaint prompted the company to hire Deming, said she was skeptical the company properly investigated Howard’s behavior.
Deming said he produced a 25- to 35-page report with 18 exhibits, and interviewed between 15 and 20 employees. He declined to describe his findings without AMI’s authorization. Stracher, the company lawyer, declined to release the report.
Deming said he was not aware that American Media re-hired Howard a year after his report.
“I did have recommendations and I don’t know what happened after those recommendations were made,” he said.
Stracher said Howard was “cautioned when he returned that what I would characterize as horsing around was not appropriate.”
Howard openly discussed the investigation with some reporters and editors, one former employee said. A January 2012, email provided to the AP by another former employee said, “There is an investigation going on of my boss right now and it’s made everyone awkward and uncomfortable. You could cut the tension with a knife.”
Crokin, the former reporter, said she believed Howard retaliated against her after Deming interviewed her, taking away serious work and assigning her menial tasks. She was laid off a short time later.
The company lawyer, Stracher, said any employees who witnessed or had concerns about Howard’s behavior should have raised them at that time.
Another ex-employee who was interviewed by Deming recalled being anxious about speaking with the HR consultant.
“I told the investigator I didn’t know anything,” said the former employee, acknowledging that answer was not true. “It’s almost like I had Stockholm syndrome.”
Yet another former employee, who said she was present when Howard showed a handful of reporters pornography that was not newsworthy, said Deming never interviewed her.
Howard, 35, came to the U.S. in 2009, months after being fired from a sports reporting job in Australian television news, following a police investigation about how he had obtained athletes’ medical records. Police did not bring charges against him. He was then hired by Australian broadcaster Craig Hutchison’s CrocMedia to report in the United States.
In a recent podcast, Hutchison praised Howard’s talent but said he quickly parted with Howard under rocky circumstances.
“His methods make me uncomfortable, that’s probably the best way to put it,” Hutchison said.
Howard then began working for American Media Inc. in Los Angeles.
During his time there, Howard blurred the lines between his role as a manager and his personal life, throwing parties in Las Vegas and in Malibu, inviting female reporters to accompany him in the evenings and regularly discussing his late-night partying in the newsroom, six former employees said.
For his 30th birthday party, Howard invited a dozen employees to Las Vegas in January 2012 for an all-expenses-paid, three-day party he dubbed “Dildo’s Dirty 30,” according to a copy of the professionally designed invitation obtained by the AP.
A week later, ex-employees said, Deming, the HR consultant, began conducting interviews.
By Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz | AP December 5 at 6:46 PM
NEW YORK — The top editor for the National Enquirer, Us Weekly and other major gossip publications openly described his sexual partners in the newsroom, discussed female employees’ sex lives and forced women to watch or listen to pornographic material, former employees told The Associated Press.
The behavior by Dylan Howard, currently the chief content officer of American Media Inc., occurred while he was running the company’s Los Angeles office, according to men and women who worked there. Howard’s self-proclaimed nickname was “Dildo,” a phallus-shaped sex toy, the former employees said. His conduct led to an internal inquiry in 2012 by an outside consultant, and former employees said he stopped working out of the L.A. office after the inquiry.
Howard quit soon after the report was completed, but the company rehired him one year later with a promotion that landed him in the company’s main office in New York. It was not clear whether Howard faced any discipline over the accusations. AP is not aware of any sexual harassment allegations involving Howard since he was rehired.
The AP spoke with 12 former employees who knew about the investigation into Howard’s behavior, though not all were aware of every detail. The outside investigator hired to examine complaints about Howard’s behavior also confirmed to AP that he completed a report.
In a brief phone interview with the AP, Howard characterized the ex-employees’ claims as “baseless.”
American Media said in a statement Tuesday evening that Howard “has the full support of AMI and its executives.” It said since Howard was rehired, “he has continued to have the respect of his peers and colleagues.”
A lawyer for American Media confirmed Tuesday that an outside investigator was hired to look into two employees’ claims about Howard’s behavior.
The lawyer, Cam Stracher, said the investigation did not show serious wrongdoing. Stracher confirmed that one employee had complained that Howard said he wanted to create a Facebook account for her vagina, but Stracher said Howard said that never happened.
“It was determined that there was some what you would call as horsing around outside the office, going to bars and things that are not uncommon in the media business,” Stracher said, “but none of it rose to the level of harassment that would require termination.”
American Media publishes the National Enquirer, RadarOnline, Star and other gossip publications and websites. In March the company purchased the glossy Us Weekly magazine for a reported $100 million, significantly boosting its readership among women.
In his job, Howard oversees those newsrooms.
AMI spokesman Jon Hammond described the two employees who had formally complained about Howard’s alleged behavior as “disgruntled.”
“The investigation described an environment where employees mixed socially outside the office — sometimes at bars — but found no direct support for the allegations of harassment made by the two complainants,” Hammond said in an email.
Most of the former employees spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they had signed nondisclosure agreements, sometimes as part of severance packages.
Two former employees, one a senior manager and another a reporter in the L.A. office, agreed to be publicly identified to discuss Howard’s behavior.
“The behavior that Dylan displayed and the way he was and the way the company dealt with it — I just think that it has to be made public because it’s completely unacceptable,” said Maxine “Max” Page, a former senior editor at RadarOnline. She complained to the human resources department about Howard’s behavior on behalf of two female reporters.
Howard made inappropriate comments to and about one of those women, Page and six other ex-employees said. Howard told employees in the newsroom he wanted to create a Facebook account on behalf of the woman’s vagina, commented on her sex life and forced her and other female employees to either watch or listen to graphic recordings of sex involving celebrities despite there being no professional rationale for doing so, they said.
A former senior editor recalled Howard wrongly claimed during a newsroom meeting that the woman had had sex with a journalism source and praised her for it, saying she needed to “do what you need” to get a story.
The editor said: “He encouraged her to have sex with people for information.”
The woman Howard was discussing confirmed these and other incidents to the AP but declined to be identified.
Page and four other employees recounted instances in which Howard talked about his own sexual exploits, including descriptions of his partners’ physical attributes.
Stracher, the company lawyer, said no one interviewed by the outside investigator complained about Howard’s handling of pornographic material. Stracher said there was nothing inherently inappropriate about that in the celebrity news business.
Stracher also said no one complained to the investigator about Howard’s alleged encouragement of a reporter to sleep with news sources.
Another former reporter, Liz Crokin, said she was also harassed by Howard, including once when he asked whether she was “going to be walking the streets tonight” on a day she wore heels to work.
Page and Crokin, like many of the other former employees who spoke to AP, were laid off by the company during waves of downsizing at AMI. The others who left the company said they did so by choice.
American Media regularly asked exiting employees to sign nondisclosure agreements that prohibit them from disclosing confidential information or disparaging company executives.
Many of the former employees who described Howard’s behavior said they decided to do so after the New Yorker and other news organizations published emails in recent weeks showing that Howard had worked with movie producer Harvey Weinstein to undermine allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein.
The emails showed that Howard had dispatched a reporter to uncover derogatory information about an actress who had accused Weinstein of rape, and then shared that information with Weinstein. Howard has said he pursued the information as part of due diligence before entering into a business relationship with Weinstein. Weinstein, who has denied allegations of non-consensual sex, has maintained he was passing along a news tip to Howard that was never published.
After the 2012 investigation into Howard’s conduct in Los Angeles, two of the ex-employees said they were told by a manager that Howard was barred from the Los Angeles office. The employees said he worked from home after that. Stracher, the company lawyer, said Howard was given no such order to stay away from the office.
Shortly after the report was issued, Howard took a new job with another company.
It’s unclear what the report concluded or whether Howard faced any disciplinary action.
The AP was unable to obtain a copy of the report. Its author, Philip Deming, confirmed he wrote a report but said he could not talk about what he found or the recommendations he made.
Page, the manager whose complaint prompted the company to hire Deming, said she was skeptical the company properly investigated Howard’s behavior.
Deming said he produced a 25- to 35-page report with 18 exhibits, and interviewed between 15 and 20 employees. He declined to describe his findings without AMI’s authorization. Stracher, the company lawyer, declined to release the report.
Deming said he was not aware that American Media re-hired Howard a year after his report.
“I did have recommendations and I don’t know what happened after those recommendations were made,” he said.
Stracher said Howard was “cautioned when he returned that what I would characterize as horsing around was not appropriate.”
Howard openly discussed the investigation with some reporters and editors, one former employee said. A January 2012, email provided to the AP by another former employee said, “There is an investigation going on of my boss right now and it’s made everyone awkward and uncomfortable. You could cut the tension with a knife.”
Crokin, the former reporter, said she believed Howard retaliated against her after Deming interviewed her, taking away serious work and assigning her menial tasks. She was laid off a short time later.
The company lawyer, Stracher, said any employees who witnessed or had concerns about Howard’s behavior should have raised them at that time.
Another ex-employee who was interviewed by Deming recalled being anxious about speaking with the HR consultant.
“I told the investigator I didn’t know anything,” said the former employee, acknowledging that answer was not true. “It’s almost like I had Stockholm syndrome.”
Yet another former employee, who said she was present when Howard showed a handful of reporters pornography that was not newsworthy, said Deming never interviewed her.
Howard, 35, came to the U.S. in 2009, months after being fired from a sports reporting job in Australian television news, following a police investigation about how he had obtained athletes’ medical records. Police did not bring charges against him. He was then hired by Australian broadcaster Craig Hutchison’s CrocMedia to report in the United States.
In a recent podcast, Hutchison praised Howard’s talent but said he quickly parted with Howard under rocky circumstances.
“His methods make me uncomfortable, that’s probably the best way to put it,” Hutchison said.
Howard then began working for American Media Inc. in Los Angeles.
During his time there, Howard blurred the lines between his role as a manager and his personal life, throwing parties in Las Vegas and in Malibu, inviting female reporters to accompany him in the evenings and regularly discussing his late-night partying in the newsroom, six former employees said.
For his 30th birthday party, Howard invited a dozen employees to Las Vegas in January 2012 for an all-expenses-paid, three-day party he dubbed “Dildo’s Dirty 30,” according to a copy of the professionally designed invitation obtained by the AP.
A week later, ex-employees said, Deming, the HR consultant, began conducting interviews.
On somewhat related news, there is an essay in the New York Times about Harvey Weinstein. It is a long article, but MJ is mentioned in the part where they describe how Weinstein used tabloid media connections to generate stories about others in order to distract from his scandals.
Dylan Howard is also involved in Weinstein's scandal as he tried to dig up dirt on Weinstein's accusers to help Weinstein.
I post that part here, but the article is longer:
Keeping the Media Close
Shortly after the news investigations of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged abuse were published, A. J. Benza, a former New York Daily News gossip columnist, received a two-word text from the producer: “Help me.”
Mr. Benza had been integral to the network of friendly journalists — gossip columnists, magazine writers, editors and authors — whom the producer relied on to promote his entertainment empire and sometimes punish rivals or deflect threats.
Over dinner in West Hollywood in late 2003 or early the next year, the men had discussed a plan to help Mr. Weinstein avoid embarrassment. While married to his first wife, he had become involved with someone else, Mr. Benza discovered. A clerk at a Los Angeles art studio where he commissioned a gift for Mr. Weinstein — a painting of a reimagined “Hollywood” sign reading “Harveywood” — volunteered to Mr. Benza that a friend, Georgina Chapman, was seeing the producer. Mr. Weinstein, who would later marry Ms. Chapman, was separated and wanted to keep the relationship confidential until he was divorced, according to his spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister.
Mr. Benza, then between jobs, had a suggestion. “I could supply your P.R. girls with a lot of gossip — a lot of stories — and if people come at them with the ‘Harvey’s having an affair story,’ they can barter,” Mr. Benza recalled telling Mr. Weinstein. “He said, ‘A. J., it’s got to be goodhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html stories,’ and I said, ‘Don’t you worry about it.’”
Collecting a monthly retainer, Mr. Benza said, he reported items on Roger Clemens, Michael Jackson and others and sent them to Mr. Weinstein’s communications team, though he didn’t know whether they were used to trade away stories about the producer. Mr. Weinstein’s spokeswoman said the payments to Mr. Benza were for public relations work during Miramax’s dispute with Disney.
After 10 months, Mr. Weinstein said, “I think the coast is clear; I think we beat this thing,” according to Mr. Benza, who recently had a brief stint as a writer for American Media and also runs his own gossip podcast, “Fame Is a Bitch.”
Mr. Benza and Mr. Weinstein were exploiting a longstanding system of favor-trading between the press and the movie business. Gossip writers need a stream of insider scoops, industry beat reporters need exclusives on the next big deal and glossy magazines need celebrities who can drive newsstand sales. Mr. Weinstein, who wanted glowing coverage, could provide that and more.
The producer often held out business opportunities to those who covered him. He had book and movie deals with writers and editors at Fox News, The New York Post, Premiere magazine, Vanity Fair, Variety and elsewhere. In Mr. Benza’s case, a book contract came immediately after he left The Daily News. In interviews, several journalists who had business ties to him said the arrangements did not cause them to pull punches.
He had particularly strong ties to the tabloid giant American Media — owner of The Enquirer, Globe, OK!, Radar Online and others — with which he teamed up to pursue several media and production deals.
Mr. Weinstein was especially close with David J. Pecker, head of the tabloid publisher American Media Inc. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
On occasion, Mr. Weinstein’s defenses showed cracks. Two journalists learned of assault accusations against him — David Carr and Ken Auletta — while writing warts-and-all profiles of him in the early 2000s.
Mr. Auletta, of The New Yorker, said he learned about a sexual assault allegation that a former assistant had made against the producer, and a related settlement that required confidentiality. Mr. Auletta said that he and his editors concluded just before publishing that they could not include the allegation because the woman would not agree to cooperate.
Mr. Carr, a New York Times columnist who died in 2015, heard about Ms. McGowan’s assault allegation and other accusations while reporting a profile for New York magazine in 2001, his editors said.
Several weeks before the article was published, Kroll, a private investigative agency that did work for Mr. Weinstein, provided him with some details of Mr. Carr’s reporting, according to a former Miramax executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Carr wrote in the profile that Mr. Weinstein seemed to have “near-perfect visibility into my notebook,” and told friends that Mr. Weinstein called him before publication to read a line he had written.
His spokeswoman dismissed the account as “urban legend,” and a top Kroll executive, Daniel E. Karson, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Carr’s article also did not include any sexual misconduct allegations; Caroline Miller, then New York’s editor, said that none of the women would speak on the record. That same wall of silence would stymie other journalists in the years that followed.
Shortly after the news investigations of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged abuse were published, A. J. Benza, a former New York Daily News gossip columnist, received a two-word text from the producer: “Help me.”
Mr. Benza had been integral to the network of friendly journalists — gossip columnists, magazine writers, editors and authors — whom the producer relied on to promote his entertainment empire and sometimes punish rivals or deflect threats.
Over dinner in West Hollywood in late 2003 or early the next year, the men had discussed a plan to help Mr. Weinstein avoid embarrassment. While married to his first wife, he had become involved with someone else, Mr. Benza discovered. A clerk at a Los Angeles art studio where he commissioned a gift for Mr. Weinstein — a painting of a reimagined “Hollywood” sign reading “Harveywood” — volunteered to Mr. Benza that a friend, Georgina Chapman, was seeing the producer. Mr. Weinstein, who would later marry Ms. Chapman, was separated and wanted to keep the relationship confidential until he was divorced, according to his spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister.
Mr. Benza, then between jobs, had a suggestion. “I could supply your P.R. girls with a lot of gossip — a lot of stories — and if people come at them with the ‘Harvey’s having an affair story,’ they can barter,” Mr. Benza recalled telling Mr. Weinstein. “He said, ‘A. J., it’s got to be goodhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html stories,’ and I said, ‘Don’t you worry about it.’”
Collecting a monthly retainer, Mr. Benza said, he reported items on Roger Clemens, Michael Jackson and others and sent them to Mr. Weinstein’s communications team, though he didn’t know whether they were used to trade away stories about the producer. Mr. Weinstein’s spokeswoman said the payments to Mr. Benza were for public relations work during Miramax’s dispute with Disney.
After 10 months, Mr. Weinstein said, “I think the coast is clear; I think we beat this thing,” according to Mr. Benza, who recently had a brief stint as a writer for American Media and also runs his own gossip podcast, “Fame Is a Bitch.”
Mr. Benza and Mr. Weinstein were exploiting a longstanding system of favor-trading between the press and the movie business. Gossip writers need a stream of insider scoops, industry beat reporters need exclusives on the next big deal and glossy magazines need celebrities who can drive newsstand sales. Mr. Weinstein, who wanted glowing coverage, could provide that and more.
The producer often held out business opportunities to those who covered him. He had book and movie deals with writers and editors at Fox News, The New York Post, Premiere magazine, Vanity Fair, Variety and elsewhere. In Mr. Benza’s case, a book contract came immediately after he left The Daily News. In interviews, several journalists who had business ties to him said the arrangements did not cause them to pull punches.
He had particularly strong ties to the tabloid giant American Media — owner of The Enquirer, Globe, OK!, Radar Online and others — with which he teamed up to pursue several media and production deals.
Mr. Weinstein was especially close with David J. Pecker, head of the tabloid publisher American Media Inc. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
On occasion, Mr. Weinstein’s defenses showed cracks. Two journalists learned of assault accusations against him — David Carr and Ken Auletta — while writing warts-and-all profiles of him in the early 2000s.
Mr. Auletta, of The New Yorker, said he learned about a sexual assault allegation that a former assistant had made against the producer, and a related settlement that required confidentiality. Mr. Auletta said that he and his editors concluded just before publishing that they could not include the allegation because the woman would not agree to cooperate.
Mr. Carr, a New York Times columnist who died in 2015, heard about Ms. McGowan’s assault allegation and other accusations while reporting a profile for New York magazine in 2001, his editors said.
Several weeks before the article was published, Kroll, a private investigative agency that did work for Mr. Weinstein, provided him with some details of Mr. Carr’s reporting, according to a former Miramax executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Mr. Carr wrote in the profile that Mr. Weinstein seemed to have “near-perfect visibility into my notebook,” and told friends that Mr. Weinstein called him before publication to read a line he had written.
His spokeswoman dismissed the account as “urban legend,” and a top Kroll executive, Daniel E. Karson, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Carr’s article also did not include any sexual misconduct allegations; Caroline Miller, then New York’s editor, said that none of the women would speak on the record. That same wall of silence would stymie other journalists in the years that followed.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html