The liberal media, who claim to champion women, overlooked allegations against Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein for two years. Instead, they gave him applause.
Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was fired Sunday in the aftermath of a New York Times story, which reported that eight women had accused Weinstein of sexual harassment. While other allegations against Weinstein were public long before that, the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) overlooked them during their morning and evening news shows -- and praised Weinstein instead.
In 2015, an Italian model called the police after allegedly being harassed by Weinstein; while the story made the news, the media were quick to forget the incident. From April 2015 to July 2017, network news hailed Weinstein as a “movie mogul,” congratulated him on awards, told stories about their relationship with Weinstein and encouraged him to share his political views. In that same span of time, the networks talked about Weinstein 14 times. Each time, they ignored his sexual allegations from 2015.
Three months after the 2015 allegations broke, NBC co-host Kathie Lee Gifford told a story on the Today Show about how she made friends with Weinstein. She revealed to Hoda Kotb on June 4, 2015, “I became friends with Harvey Weinstein because I hated Pulp Fiction. I hated the movie. I couldn’t watch it. The male---the rape scene, I just turned it off...And I said I can’t watch it, so I’m not putting it in my brain.”
When the producer heard about Gifford’s complaints, he sent her a basket of movies and a bouquet. Gifford added, “I called him up to thank him and we became friends that way. I thought it was such a classy way to say, you know what? Not everything is for everybody.”
On February 15, 2016, Gifford also made a point to congratulate Weinstein for his amfAR [The Foundation for AIDS Research] award.
CBS This Morning interviewed Weinstein on April 15, 2016. While the producer was trying to market one of his films, co-anchors Gayle King, Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell pushed Weinstein to talk about politics instead. The producer went into a sales pitch for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, saying “I’d rather go with Hillary who is a, you know, strong proven leader. And the world is crazy right now. We need that strong and smart hand.”
No mention was made of the sex allegations that made national headlines a year earlier during the six-minute interview.
In 2017, the networks also ignored Weinstein’s 2015 scandal, especially when they reported on Malia Obama’s internship with Weinstein. On Good Morning America, ABC co-anchor Diane Macedo said, “The former first daughter landed a big time internship working for producer Harvey Weinstein.” Dan Harris then joked, “How is she getting these plum jobs? Does she have a connection?”
Likewise, on the Today Show, on January 21, 2017, NBC journalist Joelle Garguilo reported that Malia Obama “landed a big internship with none other than movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.”
