This is the second part surrounding the press treatment of the Russell Brand story. Read here for the first installment.
Yesterday I covered the particulars of the hot news item of sexual harassment charges swirling around media figure Russell Brand. He has risen up in a new medium in recent years, making a brand, as it were, as a social commentator. Brand has gone through a transformation over the years, becoming a more socially conscious and more outspoken member of the entertainment community. That he no longer binds himself to the accepted liberal narratives is part of the speculation as to what might be behind this current onslaught of media coverage.
Look, it is entirely possible Brand is found guilty of something unacceptable. However, it is also possible he could become exonerated. This is the issue; due process has yet to take place, and yet in the press, he has already been convicted. I noted at press time yesterday how he already has endured a number of business deals being squelched, and since then YouTube announced it has demonitized his show on its platform as well.
All this, before the authorities have even conducted a formal investigation. Based on reported testimonies the freewheeling use of “Rape” is purely subjective in some cases, and does not apply at all in others. It is very premature to rush to that judgment at this time, yet we have prior instances showing how the press takes a discernably different approach to stories of this nature, depending on who the player is and on what side of the social-political scale they reside.
When Harvey Weinstein had his monumental, crater-inducing fall from the Hollywood strata as a result of his rape scandal in 2017, it was a cause for celebration by the press for breaking open the story. It seems to serve as a precursor to the Russell Brand reports. New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey scored a book contract and were rewarded with a movie deal for their work breaking the story. Ronan Farrow won the Pulitzer Prize for his dogged work ferreting out the numerous victims of Weinstein’s predation.
What is not mentioned at the podium during acceptance speeches and what gets left on the cutting room floor is how Weinstein had long been shielded by this same press industry for decades. When the story first broke there were, for a brief time, many voices coming forward to mention how Weinstein’s activities were an open secret in Hollywood. (Soon people began to grasp that this was not a good look for the industry, at all, and clammed up.) While the Times was celebrating its work as a victory for journalism - while condemning the permissive environment that allowed Weinstein to stampede through the industry - what is unmentioned is that the very same paper had the Weinstein scandal more than a decade earlier, and completely neutered the story.
When the rape scandal broke Sharon Waxman, publisher of the Hollywood trade outlet The Wrap, saw the Times report and the way it was spiking the football, and she had to issue her own rebuttal. It was in 2004 when she was at the Times and had developed a long-researched piece on Weinstein’s possible sexual criminality in Europe, where he frequently traveled to film festivals and movie acquisition jaunts, while he had an executive whose job there was to gather women for Harvey’s pleasure.
And the paper resisted. Editors stalled running her piece, then Waxman received calls from celebrities like Matt Damon and Russell Crowe lobbying on behalf of Weinstein. Then she learned the mogul himself went to the Times to influence his power; not only was he powerful he was an advertiser as well, who could pull his business.
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.
Waxman herself also bears her share of culpability. As mentioned, she is now a publisher, so she does not answer to editors and boardroom hand-wringers. Why was it her outlet had not broken the Weinstein story earlier, considering she had the foundation in place for an expose’ and her own team to go dig out the facts? It is because she is now the one in that position of needing to smother a story.
Her outlet covers Hollywood and as such she needs access TO Hollywood. If she were to begin looking into the salacious activities of a studio head then her outlet would begin to be locked out of the very industry she is covering. One studio blocking her would cut off a significant percentage of the industry. If she were to go after the scandalous actions of an actor, the performer is not the only contact lost. Their agent would remove access to each of their clients, and likely the agency would broaden that blockade to all talent. In order to cover Hollywood you need to be in bed with the studio system.
For this reason, Weinstein was permitted to rapaciously storm through the industry, unaccountable. Russell Brand meanwhile is viewed as an apostate, and since he went off the reservation he no longer has anything of value and thus, becomes an acceptable target in the press. The difference is that Weinstein’s activities were whispered about, but never addressed. Brand’s behavior for a decade or more has been public knowledge, with him not only being open about his hedonistic acts but profiting from them, as the press approved and gave him more exposure.
Now that same press wants to hang him over the same behavior it previously applauded, recalibrating many of the episodes into something more sinister. This is selective morality on display, being made by a press industry that itself has shown an animosity towards the ethics that supposedly guide their business.