Matt Damon helped Harvey Weinstein shut down a NYT exposé in 2004
The New York Times got a lot of credit last week for being “brave” enough to write about Harvey Weinstein’s history of alleged sexual abuse, misconduct, harassment and worse. Many have said “this is the worst-kept secret in Hollywood,” but until women come forward and tell their stories publicly, and until major outlets like the Times start reporting the stories openly, nothing will ever change. That’s how predators are enabled, when their behavior is only told in whispers, and never in mainstream media.
The NYT also ran a media-criticism piece over the weekend about how “media enablers” helped Weinstein over the years. Which is true – The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, none of the trade papers would touch the story for fear of losing access, and fear of being sued into oblivion. But the NY Times’ media-criticism came across as rather smug in some quarters because… well, in 2004, the NY Times killed their own Weinstein exposé even though they had facts on their side. The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman was the NYT reporter on the Weinstein story back then, and she wrote about the situation – go here to read. Here’s the main crux of her story:
I applaud The New York Times and writers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for getting the story in print. I’m sure it was a long and difficult road. But I simply gagged when I read Jim Rutenberg’s sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the “media enablers” who kept this story from the public for decades. “Until now,” he puffed, “no journalistic outfit had been able, or perhaps willing, to nail the details and hit publish.” That’s right, Jim. No one — including The New York Times.
In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there. I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.
As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993. I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts. At the time, he denied that he was on the payroll to help Weinstein with favors. From the story: “Reached in Italy, Mr. Lombardo declined to comment on the circumstances of his leaving Miramax or Ricucci, saying they were legal matters being handled by lawyers. ‘I am very proud of what we achieved at Miramax here in Italy,’ he said of his work for the film company. ‘It cannot be that they hired me because I’m a friend.’”
I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off. The story I reported never ran.
After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall. But I had the facts, and this was the Times. Right? Wrong. 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. “He’s not a publicly elected official,” he told me. I explained, to no avail, that a public company would certainly have a problem with a procurer on the payroll for hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the time, Disney told me they had no idea Lombardo existed.
Waxman goes on to talk about how much it hurt to think about the years since then, and how many women Weinstein had likely abused or harassed in that time. I tend to believe – until I see evidence to the contrary – that Weinstein could and did use his famous friends as cover without those friends knowing the whole story. Of course there were always whispers about Weinstein’s behavior, but as I said – until those whispers become actual news articles and lawsuits, many people will ignore the whispers. Maybe I’m being too gentle on Russell Crowe and Matt Damon, but isn’t it more likely that back then, they called the NYT to back up Weinstein without knowing what the actual NYT story was about?
As for the NYT’s smugness… yeah. But like Rebecca Traister talked about last week, the power Weinstein had 1997-2007 was absolutely enormous, and he doesn’t have the same kind of reach now. That’s why this story came out now instead of back then: because Weinstein no longer has the power and authority to shut it down. And maybe Matt Damon was no longer in the mood to call up the NYT to act as a character reference.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
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