Up Against the Wall - Journalist Edition
by Cindy Layton
At Acts of Revision we blog about the writing life, focusing on fiction and craft but, because truth is screamingly stranger than fiction, this week gets some well-deserved attention to fact, specifically, the power of the written word versus the powerful (and power-hungry).
Julie Brown, the journalist who broke the story on the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein for the Miami Herald, was opposed for the Pulitzer Prize by, of all people, Alan Dershowitz. He wrote “An Open Letter to The Pulitzer Prize Committee: Don’t Reward Fake News.”
Doth he protest too much? Julie Brown poses a direct threat to Alan Dershowitz. She’s investigating the allegation that Dershowitz was one of many rich and powerful men who participated in the abuse of underage girls.
Is it brazen and perhaps counter-productive for Dershowitz to publicly oppose the author’s potential nomination? When you’re a high-profile attorney with resources and a semblance of a reputation maybe you don’t see a downside. Maybe you’re completely invested in your own status. Maybe you’ve come to believe, like your peers, that “When you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Or maybe you’re afraid.
Maybe the noted attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is one of many rich and powerful men who are now afraid of Julie Brown.
Another journalist, Vicky Ward, uncovered the beginnings of the Epstein story while writing a profile in Vanity Fair back in 2003, but had the details of the abuse excised by then editor Grayson Carter. Ward would later disclose that Carter, after being personally visited by Epstein, would not run the story without the deletion. (Carter disputes this assertion).
When journalists garner a certain amount of visibility and support from managers and editors it makes it more possible (but not easy) to stand their ground.
Beyond challenging a writer’s professional reputation, as is seen in Dershowitz’s letter, or the equivocating by the editor in the case of Vicky Ward, more commonly, women journalists and writers are threatened through social media or online, by posters promising violence and retribution. These attacks go well beyond objections to the reporting or disputes about opinion or facts.
This article from Global Citizen surveyed 600 women journalists and found “More than half reported they had been threatened or abused in a face-to-face encounter in the course of their work, with over a quarter saying they had been physically attacked.”
So - three hundred women writers reported a face-to-face encounter with a threatening person.
One hundred fifty reported a physical attack.
In addition “Nearly two-thirds said they had suffered online harassment or threats, with more than one in ten reporting it happened often or daily.”
Jessica Valenti, writer for The Guardian and a frequent contributor to Medium, temporarily shut down her social media accounts after threats were made against her then five -year-old daughter. She also has the distinction of accumulating the most blocked comments in the history of the publication of The Guardian. A woman with a brain and an opinion is a target.
Journalists, opinion writers and bloggers have a uniquely direct relationship with readers. They operate in a public space, giving access to the spectrum of responses, including those who would harm them for their writing-while-being-female. As a fiction writer, I appreciate that, for them, there’s no shielding behind a character, or a plot, however that story might lean, politically or socially.
The internet, as we know, is a dark, anonymous place. These threats force women to make choices between truth-telling and their own safety and that of their family. When these writers persist, publish, and ultimately triumph over threats and harassment, to bring us the truth or to give voice to their lived experience, I for one, will celebrate them for their courage.
Update: In Style magazine just released this interview with badass journalists Julie Brown and Jane Mayer.
