Editor’s Note: Peggy Drexler is a research psychologist and the author of “Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family” and “Raising Boys Without Men.” She is at work on a book about how women are conditioned to compete with one another. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers. View more opinion on CNN.
The question of the week – for some at least, judging by all the discussion circling the internet, anyway – is this: Is Ronan Farrow all he’s cracked up to be as a reporter?
In several takes, the reporting tactics of the journalist best known as a #MeToo champion – and the accuracy of that reporting – have been called into question, starting with a New York Times piece Sunday challenging Farrow’s “reporting rigor.” In it, Ben Smith asks whether Farrow did enough to confirm allegations against two men – Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer – before reporting stories that led to their downfall. He also suggests that Farrow’s focus is more on telling a compelling story than on telling the entire truth; that he omits facts and details that could complicate or make his narrative less dramatic.
In a response posted to Twitter the next day, New Yorker editor Michael Luo offers some clarifications, points out that Smith essentially does what he accuses Farrow of – “sanding the inconvenient edges off of facts in order to suit the narrative he wants to deliver” – and says the magazine stands by Farrow’s reporting. Farrow himself replies similarly, but more succinctly: “I stand by my reporting.”
Even if what Smith says is true (and certainly Matt Lauer, who published his own Farrow takedown this week, believes that it is) – that Farrow shapes his truths to have the greatest impact, possibly at the expense of some truths – it should not surprise any of us, especially those who voraciously consume Farrow’s stories or tune in to watch him on television. After all, readers want it this way. We live in an age that tends to favor quantity over quality, resulting in a glut of content about any given topic to satisfy an audience ever-hungry for big stories at whatever cost. Attention spans are shorter than they’ve ever been. In an uber-rapid news cycle, mistakes too often get buried, corrected (or not), forgotten.
Meanwhile, we have a President who displays a disregard for accuracy and facts but who himself rarely sees any consequences of that disregard while doing his best, daily, to delegitimize the media he’s gotten so skilled at manipulating. Totally truthful reports get called “fake” and “lies” day in and day out.
It’s easy to see why some might mistakenly believe that getting the story out there, by any means possible, is what matters most. It’s easy to get sloppy.
But we can’t; Farrow can’t. There’s too much at stake.
There are too many people ready to take down the #MeToo movement to elevate and address women’s experiences of harassment and assault, which to many is synonymous with Farrow’s work, and they will if they can. There are too many people ready to take down the media and eviscerate the credibility of the press, and they, too, will if they can. Just look at the wave of conservatives pointing to the skepticism (especially among media and some liberals) around Tara Reade’s allegation that Joe Biden assaulted her (which he denies). Fox host Tucker Carlson blusters about the “infuriating, sickening hypocrisy of the media and the professional feminist movement,” ready to demolish what Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters, has called #MeToo’s “rigid ‘Believe All Women’ boilerplate.” Susan Faludi quoted both, along with many others, in a recent New York Times op-ed headlined “‘Believe All Women’ is a Right-Wing Trap.” She has a point.
Except – and this really matters – Farrow never said to “Believe All Women”; instead, he chose to believe women who had believable, credible stories. So, by the way, did the several other journalists responsible for launching #MeToo into the stratosphere after Tarana Burke coined the term – because, let’s remember, although Farrow tends to get all of the attention, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey were the reporters who actually broke the Harvey Weinstein story, for the New York Times. Meanwhile, Farrow’s co-author on most of his reporting about Brett Kavanaugh was his New Yorker colleague Jane Mayer. As many observers flock to the debate over Farrow’s reporting, it’s important to question the impulse to conflate his work with all reporting on these issues – and, in the process, erase the work done by women.
So while it’s easy (and compelling storytelling) to suggest that #MeToo is built on shoddy foundations, or lazy reporting, let’s be perfectly clear: Ronan Farrow and his reporting didn’t end these men’s careers. These men did. It’s not the movement, or the message, that’s the problem; if, anything, perhaps it’s a willingness to feed readers’ demand for the capital S Story at all costs. And, given Farrow and his editor’s responses to Smith and Lauer’s allegations, we can’t know if it’s even that.
And, in a critical distinction, “Believe women” is not the same as “Believe all women” (itself a construction that Faludi describes in her piece as “canard, blown into a bonfire by the right.”) Research shows that false rape accusations are rare, and that the majority of incidents go unreported, because, among other reasons, many survivors fear retaliation. But Reade’s allegation – that she was working as a staffer when Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, in the middle of a workday, in a location she cannot remember – fall short of believable. They come with little corroboration (and Biden has denied them).
While it’s useful to question Farrow’s reporting and remind journalists, and readers, that good reporting should not be rushed, it’s impossible to position the holes in Reade’s story as burdens #MeToo should bear. If her story does not hold up, it’s on her – it’s not on Farrow, or the movement, and it’s certainly not on all the victims before or after her. Nor is it a message for women, or reporters, to avoid the thorny topic of sexual assault and rape.
Get our free weekly newsletter
To uphold that end, of course – to make it possible to believe women, or anyone else – reporting, on all topics, does need to be careful, and accurate. The movement – and the media – cannot impart change while having to defend itself. There have been instances in which Farrow’s reporting has not held up. That’s a problem. But it’s important to acknowledge that it is not, by far, our biggest. That, of course, would be the men who rape and assault with impunity.
