Thread by @irin

A thread: A bit over a year ago, I joined @nymag, fresh off 6+ months of reporting on sexual harassment and assault at @washingtonpost (Read it here washingtonpost.com/investigations… washingtonpost.com/charlie-roses-…:). I’m still thinking through what it means to report stories of sexual violence.

@NYMag @washingtonpost For years, my friend (and now colleague!) @rtraister and I have been talking through the costs to people who put themselves on the line. She proposed and recruited me for this cover package that makes some of those conversations public: thecut.com/2019/09/the-to…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister .@rtraister: "The risks of speaking up in many ways replicate the risks of harassment itself: the pressures, the humiliations, the possibility of having one’s professional record obscured by smears.” Journalism, even well intentioned, can do that too. thecut.com/2019/09/the-to…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister With the “speak truth to power” stuff we love to talk about & journalism's ability to dig, fact-check, we can reduce and commodify and retraumatize —and also cower. @nymag already let me tell that tell that story already, which not everyone would've: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister Now, we wanted to find out what happened after everyone else moved on. @ameliaschonbek and @onesarahjones and I spoke to a total of dozens of people about speaking out, from the 70s to today; here are the stories of 25. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones (One cruel, unavoidable reality of journalism: you ask people to rip themselves open for you, and then come the edits.) Their lives, and the risks they took, and the violations they suffered, differed vastly from each other. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones All took this seriously. All suffered costs. There are still people that believe that this is about fame or glory or revenge or money or as @rtraister puts it sardonically “a thrilling sisterhood.” thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones I don’t say this to discourage anyone from speaking out. Almost all of the people we spoke to said they did it to help others. But journalists have a bias towards disclosure, and we need to disclose that it can cost too. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones I spoke to a woman who has not yet come forward, and why. She says in 2006, Al Franken squeezed her buttock. We granted her anonymity and the space to explain why she felt she couldn’t come forward before, and why she still feels she can’t use her name. thecut.com/2019/09/anothe…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones I told @rtraister — I can’t remember where I heard it first — that I’d heard those who credibly speak out described as frontline soldiers. They are likely to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause of transparency, safety, honesty.
thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

@NYMag @washingtonpost @rtraister @ameliaschonbek @onesarahjones I’m grateful that @nymag is a place for us to think that through all even when it doesn’t make our friends and our industry look good. May it continue. thecut.com/2019/09/coming… thecut.com/2019/09/the-to…

Picking this back up to say that 25 stories is a lot to process, so I’m going to tweet some excerpts from our cover package, one story per tweet, throughout this week. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Lindsay Meyer talked to @ameliaschonbek about how hard it’s been to get back to work — and yet she still has conflicted empathy for the man who harassed her. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Here’s Chanel Miller, aka Emily Doe, about how it felt to have her statement read around the world. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Linda Vester, who spoke out about how Tom Brokaw made unwanted advances when she was a much younger NBC colleague, says his lawyer (who recently represented Jeffrey Epstein) threatening to get Robert DeNiro to smear her. (He claims he didn’t.) thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Remember the MS town raided by ICE, leaving children behind? Workers at the Koch Foods plant, including the undocumented, had recently spoken out about sexual harassment. One says she would do it again: thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Tweeting more excerpts from our interviews on the aftermath of #metoo. Miyoshi Morris, who worked at the Ford Motor plant, had to give up her child. thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Lauren O'Connor's Weinstein whistleblowing memo was leaked to the Times. "I felt like all control that I had over my own life was taken from me," she says. "I felt stripped of my right to privacy." (Read She Said on why the reporters decided to name her.) thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Seo-Young Chu says, "I thought I had an obligation to speak out because I had just gotten tenure. I thought, What is tenure for if not for something like this?" thecut.com/2019/09/coming…

Paula Coughlin, only named person in Tailhook: "[Dick Cheney] said to me, 'You know, I had to fire the secretary of the Navy because of you.' Wow. Not because of me — because of every fuck-up between me and the secretary of the Navy." thecut.com/2019/09/coming…