SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Longreads
December 15, 2017
By Mike Dang
It was a year in which investigations loomed over us as we woke up each day and absorbed the news. Former FBI director Robert Mueller began investigating whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had any links to the Russian government and its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The opioid crisis was covered by a few outlets wondering who, exactly, is profiting while countless people are dying. But it is the investigations into sexual misconduct perpetrated by powerful men across several industries that has had the most significant impact in 2017. And much of the reporting has been led by The New York Times.
In early January, Times journalists Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt reported that Fox News had spent millions of dollars to settle sexual harassment allegations against Bill O’Reilly. By April, the two reporters began publishing stories on a near-daily basis: O’Reilly continued to thrive at Fox News despite five women coming forward with allegations against him; advertisers announced they were withdrawing their ads from O’Reilly’s show because of the Times reports; President Trump defended O’Reilly and was immediately criticized; 21st Century Fox enlisted a law firm to investigate a harassment claim against O’Reilly. In the third week of April, after all this rigorous reporting, O’Reilly was finally forced out at Fox News.
O’Reilly’s fall was a catalyst for a long-needed house cleaning at the media corporation. In May, the Times reported that Fox News co-president Bill Shine was also forced out, accused in several lawsuits of covering up the scandals at the network and dismissing concerns from women who spoke out.
A shift appeared to be transpiring: Institutions that had customarily protected their own interests by insulating men in power and enabling their abusive behavior began taking allegations more seriously (and it is important to note here, with clear evidence from the settlements that have been made public, that it’s not that women haven’t come forward to report abuse in the past, but that their concerns have been routinely shrugged off, and that they’ve been silenced).
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Below is a (comprehensive, but not complete) list of men who have been accused of sexual misconduct, and the reporters and news outlets who broke the news and helped brave victims tell their stories:
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.