When Our Trusted Storytellers Are Also the Abusers

(I must live in a very different world, because none of the people she mentioned has had an impact on my thinking or views, in art or politics or anything else.

And something else. One can properly refer to HRC as SECRETARY Clinton, as one refers to former office holders. a telling omission there, it seems to me)

When Our Trusted Storytellers Are Also the Abusers

By KATIE ROGERS


hen Our Trusted Storytellers Are Also the Abusers

https://nyti.ms/2BzTKXF
How Lauer Interviewed Trump and Clinton
When Matt Lauer interviewed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in September 2016, he was widely criticized as being soft on Mr. Trump and tough on Mrs. Clinton. By NILO TABRIZY on Publish Date November 30, 2017. Photo by Karsten Moran for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »


For decades, the journalists Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly and Mark Halperin appeared in front of cameras and tried to help Americans understand the country and one another. Now that they’ve lost their jobs after multiple accusations of sexual abuse, we are left wondering what they taught us. What did we collectively learn from Harvey Weinstein, the producer who chose which movies we saw, shaping our views of art and our ideals of beauty? Or from Louis C.K., who abused some women and excluded others from comedy projects, even as he made us laugh? How much did the abuse of women — often younger, subordinate or not famous — by powerful male journalists factor into the stories they told us? What did we learn about power, politics, accountability, elections — or even about Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential candidate from a major party?

“Two men with this much disregard for women chose the stories seen by 8.5 million people — largely female — every morning for years,” Janice Min, a partial owner and former editor of The Hollywood Reporter, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, in a reference to Mr. Lauer and Mr. Rose. “Think about the damage.” There also are those apparently uninterested in examining how such behavior might have affected the work at all. The media personality Geraldo Rivera responded to reports of Mr. Lauer’s sexual abuse by referring to journalism as a “flirty business.”

But one episode from the 2016 election cycle has been held up as a stark example, raising yet another question: What did the public internalize about Mrs. Clinton when Mr. Lauer, a journalist best known for behaving like a fatherly scamp for NBC’s “Today” program, interrupted her at a presidential forum to tell her to be brief while explaining a policy decision?


In the interview, which was widely panned at the time, Mr. Lauer extensively questioned Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, about her use of a private email server. He failed to aggressively press Donald J. Trump, then the Republican nominee, about his policy views or challenge him on falsehoods. Mrs. Clinton addressed the interview in her book, “What Happened,” calling Mr. Lauer’s interview “a pointless ambush.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/sexual-harassment-media-politics-lauer.html