Am un dispret foarte mare pentru cei care scriu in presa din Romania. Pentru majoritatea, nu chiar toti.
Dar daca citesti ce se intampla si cum se lucreaza cu adevarat profesionist in redactiile mari de presa din lumea asta, intelegi ca suntem la sute de ani distanta in profesionalism, abordare, structura redactionala, increderea in colegi si pregatirea lor, responsabilitatea cu care abordeaza subiectele, etica, discutiile ample despre cum sa vorbeasca cu un potential subiect fara sa-l raneasca, dar sa-i castige increderea, cand e vorba de un subiect delicat.
Cand traiesti in Romania e un efort f f mare si un consum in plus de energie sa nu te murdaresti de ce e in jurul tau in presa, daca faci aceasta meserie. Sa nu te pervertesti, sa nu vrei castigul rapid ci sa cauti calea corecta. Sa ai responsabilitatea textului scris si constiinta faptului ca, in epoca online, ramane pe vecie scris. Sa fii preocupat sa intelegi structuri de scriere ale marilor articole care au facut istorie in lume (pentru ca scoala ro nu ti le preda) si sa-ti mentii entuziasmul incercand sa respecti tot ce tine de etica si profesionalism, indiferent de zona in care scrii (politic, sport, cultura, divertisment)
Am citit zilele acestea cartea She Said She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement” despre ancheta de aproape 3 ani facuta de doua reporterite din The New York Times ( Jodi Kantor si Megan Twohey ) care a dus la dezvaluirile despre Harvey Weinstein, directorul casei de filme Miramax care a agresat sexual multe dintre angajatele sale. O gasiti aici.
Pe de o parte cartea mi-a dat aripi, mi-a dat increderea ca putem ajuta la schimbare si credinta ca, daca fiecare dintre noi isi face treaba bine si arata alte exemple exceptionale de jurnalism care sa-i inspire pe copii, mica noastra bula din meseria asta s-ar putea schimba inspre mai bine.
Pe de alta parte m-a demoralizat teribil, stiind ca suntem inconjurati de prea multi si prea prosti. (vin dupa o saptamana in care un text pe care l-am scris pentru urban.ro – necrologul lui Voicu Radescu – a fost copiat integral de zeci de site-uri pentru ca urban.ro a scris primul despre deces si a publicat un necrolog amplu; si pentru ca prea putini din presa ro de astazi au background-ul sa scrie pe un asemenea subiect, in plus au cultura google cu search pe net si luat de pe oriunde. Btw, am verificat la telefon inainte de publicare cu aproape toti oamenii mentionati in text anii si contextul in care au lucrat cu Voicu, stiind ca e un text care va ramane, iar citatele din interviurile liternet.ro le-am ales ca sa marchez prietenia lui cu creatorul site-ului, Razvan Penescu, cu care a lucrat indeaproape la sustinerea tinerilor actori. Au fost copiate grupa mare, daca tot erau in text).
Nu vreau sa dezbat contextul de ce am ajuns sa fim inconjurati de prosti la site-urile care pun stiri (pentru ca nu le scriu, doar le pun cu copy paste de pe unde apuca), la ziare si uneori la tv, am sa va arat insa cateva lucruri frumoase din cartea She Said. Si cred ca mai exista o speranta si pentru presa noastra, pentru exista departamentul investigatii Libertatea, exista Rise Project, Recorder sau DOR.
Investigatia doamnelor Jodi Kantor si Megan Twohey a pornit de la un alt caz de abuz sexual la nivel inalt, de la investigatiile despre abuzurile presedintelui Trump de dupa aparitia inregistrarii in care fostul presedinte SUA pe atunci om de televiziune i-a spus unui coleg ca atunci cand ii place o femeie, trece la actiune adica “grab them by the pussy”.
Editorul coordinator al The New York Times a vrut sa vada daca mai sunt alte cazuri la asemenea nivel in alte domenii si li s-a sugerat sa se uite spre Hollywood. Era in 2015. ( textul final despre investigatia Weinstein a aparut la sfarsitul lui 2018)
A delegat-o pe Jodi pentru un research pe tema pentru ca mai lucrase pe asemenea subiecte.
Iata cine era Jodi la acel moment, intre timp e castigatoare de premiu Pulitzer.
“in 2013, Jodi had started investigating women’s experiences at corporations and other institutions. The gender debate in the United States already seemed saturated with feeling: opinion columns, memoirs, expressions of outrage or sisterhood on social media. It needed more exposure of hidden facts. Especially about the workplace.
Workers, from the most elite to the lowliest, were often afraid to question their employers. Reporters were not. In doing those stories, Jodi had found that gender was not just a topic, but a kind of investigative entry point. Because women were still outsiders at many organizations, documenting what they experienced meant seeing how power functioned. She wrote back to Rose McGowan, calling on those experiences:
“Here’s my own track record on these issues: Amazon, Starbucks, and Harvard Business School have all changed their policies in response to gender-related problems I exposed. When I wrote about the class gap in breastfeeding—white collar women can pump on the job, lower paid women cannot—readers responded by creating the first-ever mobile lactation suites, now available in 200+ locations across the country. If you’d rather not speak, I understand, and best of luck with your book publication.”
Prezentarea e dintr- un mail pe care l-a scris catre Rose McGowan, o actrita care postase pe twitter ca a fost abuzata sexual fara sa dea alte detalii, cand incerca sa o convinga sa vorbeasca cu ea despre agresiune.
Peste mai bine de 6 luni in care Jodi Kantor a vorbit cu mai multe actrite, a cautat printre pozele de la festivalurile de la Cannes sau Venetia confirmari ca femeile – care nu voiau sa-si spuna identitatea in ziar si vorbeau off the record – chiar au fost acolo cu oamenii despre care spuneau ca au fost abuzate, editorul coordinator, Rebecca Corbett, i-a propus sa mai aiba o colega de investigatie.
Pe Megan. Iata ce facuse Megan Twohey pana atunci.
In mid-June Corbett suggested that Jodi contact a colleague, Megan Twohey, who was relatively new at the paper. Megan was on maternity leave, but she had a real touch with this kind of work, the editor said. Jodi didn’t know what help she would be, but she sent off an email anyway. — When Megan got Jodi’s email, she was caring for her newborn child and recovering from the most bruising reporting stretch of her career. She had arrived at the Times in February 2016 to cover politics, investigating the presidential candidates. Megan had said yes to the job with some hesitation: Politics had never been her assignment or interest. But within weeks of her arrival, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the paper, had tapped Megan for a specific line of inquiry that drew on her reporting expertise: Had Donald J. Trump’s behavior toward women ever crossed legal or ethical lines? For more than a decade, Megan had been uncovering sex crimes and sexual misconduct. In Chicago, she had revealed how police and prosecutors in the area were shelving rape kits, robbing victims of the chance for justice, and how sex-abusing doctors had continued to practice. Later, she had exposed a black market for adopted children that had delivered some of them to sexual predators.
Si iata si un fragment din carte carte arata cine era Rebecca Corbett, editorul coordonator cea care verifica periodic statusul ancheiet, punea intrebari pentru ca reporteritele sa vada din mai multe perspective si era un suport activ pentru doamnele care au facut reporting.
She was sixtysomething, skeptical, scrupulous, and allergic to flashiness or exaggeration, the cohead of the Times investigation department but so low profile that she barely surfaced in Google search results. Her ambition was journalistic, not personal. But she was revered in newspaper circles because of one quality she did share with Weinstein: She had exerted outsized influence by championing other people’s work. At the Baltimore Sun, she had mentored a twenty-two-year-old reporter named David Simon, pushed him to stop writing short news items about rowhouse fires and murders and pursue more ambitious ones about the sociology of crime and class, and edited him until the day he left the Sun to create shows like The Wire. (In the final season, the character of the city editor, one of the show’s few heroes, was a man, but he was based in part on Corbett.)
A few years after September 11, 2001, when two Times reporters discovered that the National Security Agency was secretly spying on American citizens without warrants, Corbett kept the investigation alive despite internal debate and intense pressure from the White House not to publish, producing one of the biggest scoops of the Bush years. Like Jodi and Megan, she had come of age in male-dominated newsrooms, raising a daughter in the middle of story sprints. When she was appointed to the Times masthead in 2013, it became 50 percent female for the first time, but the milestone went mostly unremarked. Later, people would say that two women had broken the Weinstein story, but it had really been three. As Corbett tracked the growing body of hotel room stories, she had one chief concern. “What is your strategy for getting these women on the record?” she asked every few days. Jodi and Megan had a sort-of answer: If we find enough of them, we can urge everyone to go public at once, for safety in numbers. That was too risky an approach for Corbett. The sources were extremely reluctant, for understandable reasons. There was something inherently unfair in this kind of reporting: Why was it their burden to publicly tell uncomfortable stories when they had never done anything wrong?
Corbett was worried that Jodi and Megan could end up with a shocking pile of off-the-record hotel room stories but no article. Even if the reporters did manage to persuade one or two women, that could lead to the old “he said, she said” problem. The journalists were realizing the Weinstein story would have to be broken with evidence: on the record accounts, ideally, but also the overwhelming force of written, legal, and financial proof.
Iar seful tuturor – executive editor la The New York Times, cel care participa impreuna cu reporteritele, editorul coordinator si avocatii dupa aproape 3 ani de investigatii la o intalnire cu Weinstein este Dean Baquet.
Six people, all with some form of authority and some final responsibility for guiding the Weinstein story safely into the paper, sat in Baquet’s office. Baquet was the boss, the journalist charged with supervising the entire, encyclopedic newspaper every day. The ultimate calls were always his. But Corbett had guided the project from the beginning, and Baquet relied on her in part because her instincts were a little different. They were in running conversation with Matt Purdy, who amid the tumult of supervising many stories across the newsroom was still keeping close watch on the investigation. But Jodi and Megan as reporters had their own form of authority and responsibility. They had gathered the information. They had the relationships with the sources. They were writing the story, their bylines would appear at the top, and they would take a great deal of the blame or credit for whatever happened. The sixth figure in the room was David McCraw, the Times attorney. He was there to keep the paper out of legal trouble, so no one present wanted to reject his advice. Corbett felt they needed to give Weinstein forty-eight hours, as much for the journalists’ sake as his. They would be able to say they had done things right and avoid giving Weinstein an opening to say they’d been unfair. To Baquet, that seemed like too much. Nobody in the group trusted Weinstein, but he was the most suspicious. His instincts told him that Weinstein was just going to run out the clock. Besides, the team figured that however long they gave Weinstein, he would take more time. This was a negotiation and the journalists had to start on the short side.
But Baquet also wanted the investigation to be irreproachable. At the start of his newspaper career, he had covered the case of Gerald Hatcher, a small-time actor who was accused of posing as a talent scout to lure aspiring actresses as young as fourteen into private meetings about their future movie careers and then raping them. The way Baquet had written those stories still made him cringe all these years later. The man was guilty, Baquet was sure. But he had been too quick to convict him on the page, he thought, writing in a way that was too sensationalized and melodramatic, without enough fair summary of the arguments for the defense. “It was even probably disrespectful to the women,” he said later. “I always felt like everyone in the courtroom lost a little respect for me, including the prosecutors.” Baquet wanted to expose Weinstein, but correctly.
Acum ganditi-va la cine sunt cei care conduc redactiile de la site-uri, ziarele din ro, televiziuni sau reviste. E o secventa in carte – care e scrisa ca un thriller – cand editorul coordinator pune presiune pe reporterite sa caute mai mult spunand ca altfel nu publica ancheta.
In Romania te-ai gandi ca, de fapt, editorul a primit un telefon “de mai sus” si va fi oprita investigatia. La ei, desi e vorba despre influenta de milioane toti sefii ierarhici au fost la sustinere pentru reporterite, s-au luptat ca paraleii cand au venit avocatii lui Weinsten peste ele cu amenintari.
Weinsten angajeaza inclusiv firma din Israel Black Cube – care a fost platita si de PSD ca sa-i faca o imagine negativa Laurei Codruta Kovesi pe vremea cand ar fi facut orice sa o dea afara din DNA. Weinsten voia sa fie intimidate victimele, sa li se faca o imagine negativa in presa ca sa nu mai aiba curaj sa vorbeasca on the record, cu nume si prenume.
Organizeaza si conferinte pentru drepturile femeilor la Hollywood ca sa aiba un cadru sa plateasca reprezentantele din ONG-uri care ar fi putut vorbi impotriva lui.
Nu stiu cati redactori din Romania ar fi rezistat presiunilor, cate redactii ar fi avut un asemenea cod de etica si proceduri de lucru. Si un asemenea spirit de echipa intre oameni exceptional de bine educati in meseriile lor. (catre final cand actritele incep sa spuna ca vor sa povesteasca on the record, colegii le ajuta pe reporterite sa rescrie fragmente importante de text pentru ca fi gata in timp pentru tipar)
Aici e textul rezultat dupa 3 ani de ancheta, e semnat doar de cele doua doamne desi a fost o munca de echipa cu foarte multi oameni. E textul care a schimbat istoria la Hollywood si a generat miscarea #metoo. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html
Daca lucrati in industria media va rog sa cititi aceasta carte. O gasiti aici.
O sa va arate cat de importanti sunt oamenii cu care va insotiti in meseria asta, dar si cata pregatire e nevoie si cata munca pentru textele care fac istorie si schimba si cu un milimetru lumea. Jurnalismul nu e despre “sa punem ceva online”. Se poate face performanta si se pot scrie articole exceptionale si cand vorbim despre un actor, un sportiv dar si cand vorbim despre presedintele tarii.
Noi alegem daca facem lucrurile exceptional sau ne scaldam in balegar.
Si cum zicea domnul regizor Andrei Cohn “nu poti sa pui toata viata in tine numai mizerii si, cand vine momentul de rascruce in care trebuie sa fii super erou, sa iasa Superman din tine. De unde sa iasa, bre?!”
Cartea va fi adaptata intr-un film cu Carrey Mulligan si Zoe Kazan in rolurile reporteritelor, am scris pe urban.ro despre el, aici.
