Harvey Weinstein, Michael Douglas, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Sen. Al Franken, Roy More, Louis C.K. Steven Seagal, Ed Westwick, Dustin Hoffman, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Spacey, Former President Geroge H.W. Bush, John Besh, Ben Affleck, Andy Dick, Aziz Ansari, R. Kelly, David Copperfield, Gene Simmons, Sylvester Stallone, James Franco, Mario Batali . . . These are just a few of the men in media that have been accused of sexual harassment since last October, when The New Yorker published an article with several accounts of harassment by accusers of Harvey Weinstein. Since that story broke, countless other men in media have been accused of sexual harassment –stories range from years of sexual assault to one-time incidents of inappropriate language. All these stories have been constant headlines on major news outlets. Many question if the media is giving fair and accurate coverage to the accusations of all these accounts of sexual harassment and misconduct. The purpose of this paper is to show that the media is sensationalizing these accounts of sexual harassment and in return it is actually doing an injustice to the subject of sexual harassment as whole. Though all accusations of sexual harassment should be taken seriously, the constant saturation of these headlines have actually diluted the topic and in many ways gas-lighted the American public (Psychology Today, NBCNews.com, Kantor).
Before diving into the recent events of the sexual harassment accusations, and the sensationalizing of the media, it is important to know and understand these terms and how the law defines it.
Media sensationalism is a “type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are overhyped to present biased impressions on events, which may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story.” (Oxford Dictionaries).
The actual definition of sexual harassment is “uninvited and unwelcomed verbal or physical behavior of a sexual nature, especially by a person in authority towards a subordinate.” The law defines sexual harassment into three different ways; the first is called “quid pro quo”. This is when a sexual favor is exchanged as a tern or condition of employment. An example of this is when actress alleged that Harvey Weinstein invited her to his hotel room, showed her contracts for his next three films, but he told her that she could only sign then if she agreed to sleep with him. Under this “quid pro quo” the harasser must have the power to influence the professional treatment of the victim, such as whether she’s hired, promoted, receives a salary, or salary increase (HowStuffWorks).
The second type of sexual harassment is a hostile or abusive work environment. This may occur between co-workers or an employee and someone else who enters the building at work, such as a delivery person, client, or outside sales representative. Some examples may be such as a man grabs a woman's indecently or he tells her that she looks “hot”. Under this type, several elements must be present such as unwelcome conduct can be verbal, physical or a combination of both. This type of behavior must also be severe or pervasive. The difficult under this is that is is easy for the lines to be blurred. It isn’t always so black and white (HowStuffWorks).
Then there is also the classification of assault. An assault is a violent form of harassment. Under normal cases Sexual harassment must be severe or pervasive, and builds up over time. With an assault, it only takes one time to be defined as sexual harassment (HowStuffWorks).
So what started the media sensation? In early October of 2017, an article was published by the New Yorker and the New York Times that gave accounts of dozens of when that revealed decades of all one narrative: the misconducts and abuse of Harvey Weinstein (Farrow, Kantor).
According to these accounts, Harvey Weinstein, who is a film producer and founder of Miramax, has been taking advantage of women in return for giving them acting jobs. Women who did not give into his sexual advances have been blackballed in the entertainment industry. The behavior and actions of Weinstein was not news to those in Hollywood, to many this has been an ongoing and silent understanding (Farrow).
Since the Weinstein stories made headlines, so has over 100 men in media, ranging from actors, producers, musicians, NFL players, chefs, politicians, and anyone associate with Hollywood or fame. Not only have these men been accused, but the mere accusations have of the media headline have caused many their jobs, current deals, or future jobs (NBCNews.com).
When reading the list of accusers and the alleged accusations, less than half are accused by more than one accuser of a crime. Many of the accused are guilty of isolated incidents, such as inappropriate language or touching. These incidents are not ok, but when given the same media attention as someone as Harvey Weinstein, it dilutes the real issues (NBCNews.com).
By bringing the accused to the forefront, many have argued that this will hold these harassers responsible for their actions. But instead this has just turned into a huge sexual harassment witch hunt and into one media sensational storm.
A few examples of sensationalism of sexual harassment would be when Ben Affleck was accused of inappropriately touching a an actress during an interview. The actress bashed him on Twitter for it, but it was later proven to be an exaggeration when a fan tweeted a video of the interview and disproved her extreme accusation (Delbyck).
Another story would be of Aziz Ansari. Last January a headline of a popular millennial news website read, “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.” In this article was an account of a young 22 year old women who went on a date with Ansari and willingly participated in events while claiming to have given him “signals” of her not wanting to participate in the events. This article was criticized as being the worst thing for the #MeToo movement. The New York Times reacted with an opinion piece titled, “Aziz Ansari is Guilty. Of Not Being a Mind Reader.” (Way, Weiss).
One more story of the media sensationalizing sexual harassment would be the story of Fomer President George H.W. Bush. An actress claims to have posed for a photo with the former president and a group of people when she was assaulted by him. She claims that in front of his wife, he told her a dirty joke and patted her on the bottom. This incident happened four years ago, and the former president was restrained in a wheelchair. One would not argue that these above instances did not happen or that they are acceptable behavior, but they do not deserved to be thrown on the forefronts of major news headlines (Murray).
Many have argued that due to this media storm, that this also brought the #MeToo and the #TimesUp movements to the forefront. These movements were moments that were pulsating to happen. It is a beautiful rise of women for a beautiful cause: to create change. Women are being heard and perhaps healed in the process. Though it raises money for victims, the #TimesUp movement especially has just turned into public relations propaganda. The #TimesUp movement has been criticized by many as “Hollywood fakery” (Person).
The Times Up theme was created for the Golden Globes awards in 2018. The sponsor of this theme was an agency that supported Weinstein and had sent him many actress (that he assaulted) to play in his movies. This sponsorship could seem as an attempt to make up for what Weinstein has done. But if it truly was an attempt to make things right or to separate themselves from Weinstein, why wouldn’t they ask any of the females that were featured in the New Yorker article to participate? All the participants of the Times Up Golden Globes theme were actresses who in the past had supported Weinstein (Person).
No one is arguing that the accused are not actually sexual harassers or have committed sexual assaults, it is concerning is that it often seems that media flies away with stories on this topic without it being verified or confirmed. Too often reports have been made in the media and by the time the accused hear about all they can do is apologized, their side of the story is never of any interest.
Is all this media attention and buzz really doing just to the cause? Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook warns about the backlash women may face due to the #MeToo movement. Make managers and employees may fear to hire, promote, mentor women due to fear of being accused of sexual harassment. So that outcome is that women don’t get hired, promoted, and mentors, and this cause for women is actually helping to take a step back, instead of a step forward (NBCNews.com).