TMD: Ken, you have talked 
about your experience with trying 
to break the Weinstein story back 
in 2002 and 2015. What about 
the circumstances in 2017 were 
different from 2002 and 2015 that 
allowed the story to be released?
Ken Auletta: But I think you 
know there’s a tendency to say, 
well because of Cosby, because of 
Roger Ailes, because of O’Reilly 
and others have the culture 
change and therefore continue 
to meddle with ... I think that 
minimizes the work that this guy 
did and the reporters with The 
New York Times did to make 
women feel comfortable enough 
to come out and be brave … My 
hat’s off to the job this guy did.
TMD: What encouraged you to 
stick with the story between 2002 
and 2015?
KA: I thought this guy (Harvey 
Weinstein) was a beast. I thought 
he would do it again, and he did.
TMD: Ronan, do you think 
there are any areas where the 
#MeToo movement has failed? 
There 
have 
been 
criticisms 
saying working class women and 
women of color have not been 
as highlighted. Is the #MeToo 
movement just a reshuffling of 
existing power dynamics?
RF: You know, I wish I could 
take credit for any movement. 
This activism and even the term 
“me too” was around a long time 
before these stories. Tarana Burke 
had been using that term and doing 
grassroots community organizing 
around this for years and years. 
So it’s important to hat tip to 
those people who are really better 
equipped to answer the kind of 
question that you’re asking about 
the movement dimension of it. I’m 
watching from the sidelines as a 
reporter. I have a much narrower 
job which is just digging for the 
facts. I think that by and large, the 
reporting around that movement 
has been really strong from some 
of the major publications. We’re 
seeing almost a renaissance of this 
kind of tackling of sacred cows 
and untouchable subjects through 
investigative journalism. So I’m 
really happy about that facet of it.
TMD: Ken, often, there is 
competition between journalists 
to “break a story” first, but in 
the situation with Weinstein, 
your cooperation with Ronan 
helped expose years of abuse 
and misconduct. When should 
journalists consider themselves 
brothers in arms, and when 
should they see themselves as 
competitors? Can that competition 
be counterproductive?
KA: Well, I think competition 
spurs us to be aggressive, to do 
a better job, but I think one of 
the things — Ronan and I were 
talking about this earlier — one of 
the things that I actually marvel 
at is the generosity between 
The New York Times reporters 
… but they came out a week 
before, they were both working 
on it and he (Ronan) came out, 
and they were different stories 
and yet they both coagulated ... 
Yet, they praised each other. It 
wasn’t about sharp elbows, it was 
about, ‘Good job, good job.’ That’s 
really extraordinary, that kind of 
feeling of joy for his success.
RF: Well, it was a perfect 
storm where The Times broke 
these 
incredibly 
important 
stories about sexual harassment 
and then it really did add a very 
different dimension five days 
later that there were assault 
and rape allegations. I think if it 
flipped either way, the individual 
stories wouldn’t have had the 
same impact. Also, the point of 
breaking these stories requires 
a tank-like mentality for any 
news organization and I think 
it put both The New Yorker and 
The Times in a much stronger 
position. They were both going 
into battle on this quote facing 
down with threats and lawsuits 
and so forth.
TMD: For both of you, where 
is the line between activism and 
journalism? Because sometimes 
it can be tricky to find the line.
KA: Our job is to be an umpire 
and not a participant and to call 
fouls and to expose what we 
think, and if we’re activists, it’s 
hard for us to be credible.
RF: I talked about this a 
lot. You know, my job is not to 
be an activist. I’m incredibly 
inspired by good activism that 
can be prompted by exposing the 
right facts. But I really, I think 
somewhere deep in my bones — 
and I don’t say this as a, you know, 
a self-advertisement — I don’t 
necessarily think it’s a good trait, 
but I just, I get very dispassionate 
when I’m looking at the facts. 

Actually I had a situation in a 
reporting job recently where 
someone who had really viciously, 
a PR person, who had smeared 
a lot of women, sexual assault 
accusers and worked for people 
that I had, you know, personal 
negative history with and was 
it looked like maybe going to 
be a source who would back up 
the account of my stories. And I 
would have given that person a 
hero’s treatment in a heartbeat 
that never even occurred to me, 
and my editor actually said to 
me, “You’re okay with putting 
this person in the story, given 
the horrendous things they’ve 
done?” … I don’t claim to be 
perfect or a robot. I definitely 
have opinions. But when it comes 
to that particular process an art 
form, the emotion does drain out.
TMD: Journalists at all levels 
have exposed sexual misconduct 
on the behalf of people who 
hold a substantial degree of 
power, in executive offices, on 
university campuses and even 
inside newsrooms. It’s something 
we’ve been working to do here 
at The Michigan Daily and the 
University of Michigan. What’s 
your advice to young journalists 
who may be overwhelmed by 
the magnitude of reporting on 
situations like this?
RF: 
There’s 
a 
couple 
of 
things. One is, I’ve now had this 
incredible luxury of being able 
to talk to student reporters all 
around the world, speaking at 
schools like this one, who are so 
passionate about what they do 
and who, in many cases, on many 
campuses, are doing important 
groundbreaking 
reporting. 
That’s one thread of what’s 
gonna carry us through these 
incredibly trying times. Local 
journalism is important and very 
much under threat, you know, 
there’s a lot of questions about 
the sustainability of the business 
model. 
Large 
scale 
media 
organizations, you see a mix of 
incredible, important work that 
really defends our democracy and 
holds the powerful accountable, 
and also media organizations in 
the tank for powerful people and 
doing exactly the wrong thing, 
and covering up wrongdoing. 
So we’re going to need that next 
generation to navigate all of that. 
And so my advice to student 
journalists is to keep going. I 
hope that, you know if anything 
I do ever plays a little part in 
igniting people’s passion for this, 
I am so happy because I can tell 
you, when I was in the thick of 
tough stories, it was people like 
Ken, who were the example that 
kept me going and particularly 
when you stared down a lot of 
those forces of suppression that 
I just mentioned, you need all 
the encouragement you can get. 
If I can replicate that and be for 
others what a lot of reporters I 
respect were for me in my most 
trying times, I hope I can be. And 
I get a lot of emails from student 
reporters, so feel free to reach 
out if you’re dealing with a tough 
story and I probably will have 
absolutely nothing helpful to say 
but I’m happy to try.
KA: 
If 
you’re 
a 
student 
newspaper and you follow this 
guy, you just look at his work, and 
his work will inspire you. You 
say, I gotta do something, or hey 
I wrote about this professor at 
the University. And that’s exactly 
what happened here after this guy 
broke stories in The New Yorker 
and The Times broke their story. 
You’re not going to put that genie 
back in the box. And I think young 
people learn that our job in part 
is to challenge power. To be an 
adversary.
TMD: Given the widespread 
impact 
of 
#MeToo, 
moving 
forward, where do you see the 
next cultural reckoning coming 
from?
KA: I mean you know you 
could just go anywhere … 
clearly, in Washington we talk 
about the conflicts of interest. 
I don’t think we’ve cracked the 
surface of sexual harassment 
and sexual beastly behavior. 
I mean, we can list ... look, 
now the latest one last week 
about admission to colleges. 
And here we are we’re talking 
about people paying off but 
there, there are much deeper 
problems. When I was on the 
board of my daughter’s private 
school, they said we have 39 
openings for kindergarten and 
28 of them for legacy. So, we 
have 11 openings, that’s all you 
have? When you talk about two 
classes and unequal treatment, 
boy oh boy, that’s just right 
there. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Wednesday, March 20, 2019 — 3A

Chang believes the main 
takeaway of the summit is to 
support 
local 
communities 
through hiring practices.
“If I can only choose one, 
I’d go with: look local, build 
local, hire local,” Chang wrote. 
“Invest in our community for 
long term economic viability 
and sustainability.”
Whitmer spoke about the 
state budget and prioritizing 
infrastructure issues such as 
the roads, education and clean 
water. Whitmer also addressed 
her proposal for an increase 
of the gas tax and remedial 
measures in the plan that seek 
to compensate the working 
poor and senior citizens.
“No one wants to raise the 
gas tax,” Whitmer said. “I 
don’t enjoy putting the solution 
on the table, but it is about 
time that we have serious 
conversation about where we 
are headed as a state and what 
it’s going to take to fix these 
problems. Fifteen cent gas tax 
increase this fall, going up 
another 15 cents six months 
later, and 15 cents after that, 
actually puts us in a position to 

solve all of the problems that I 
just went over.”
Mautone 
spoke 
about 
his 
personal 
journey 
from 
graduating 
from 
college 
at 
Eastern Michigan University, 
to working as a waiter in 
Austin, Texas, to getting hired 
and trained by Dell. According 
to Mautone, Dell recruited 
young 
people 
who 
worked 
in the service industry that 
developed good communication 
and problem-solving skills and 
fit well into the company’s 
culture.
Mautone said his experience 
taught him local companies 
should reconsider what they 
look for when hiring employees. 
He cautioned this mindset must 
also apply to management.
“I want you to take a chance 
and change jobs,” Mautone 
said. “That is what we did at 
Duo, that is why Rich asked me 
to be here. We started looking 
through a different lens, and 
with that, we were able to find 
local talent. So you might be 
saying to yourself, Raffaele, I 
believe in that. But does your 
management 
team? 
Because 
see that’s where I started 
looking next. I was saying 
to everyone, we’re going to 

find interns, we’re going to 
transform individuals that are 
in the industry or not in this 
industry, but want to be in tech, 
want to be in IT, want to be in 
cybersecurity, and let’s enable 
them. But if you don’t have the 
right infrastructure or mindset 
within your organization, even 
in the next layer within your 
management team, it won’t 
work. And I found that out 
fairly quickly.”
Ida Abdalkhani, the founder 
and president of Ability to 
Engage, 
a 
marketing 
and 
consumer research company, 
said one of the reasons she 
attended the summit was to 
learn how to best engage the 
community and hire locally. 
Abdalkhani said this has been 
difficult to do.
“I wanted to learn more, 
myself being an entrepreneur, 
and needing to find hires — 
it’s been incredibly difficult 
to find people in Ann Arbor, 
the majority of people that I 
work with are actually outside 
of Michigan, and so it’s a topic 
that I’m interested in to learn 
about,” Abdalkhani said. “How 
can I, as someone who’s looking 
for people in the state and in 
Ann Arbor, think differently 

about how to approach the 
topic?”
LSA senior Zach Tingley 
attended the summit with the 
University’s Poverty Solutions 
organization. Tingley said the 
summit made him aware of 
how managers’ hiring practices 
affect 
the 
makeup 
of 
the 
workforce.
“I never really think about 
managerial practices and things 
of that nature,” Tingley said. “I 
thought it was really interesting 
listening to these new hiring 
practices that he was talking 
about. 
I 
really 
appreciated 
being very conscious of the way 
that company’s hiring practices 
affect the workforce and affect 
access to the workforce, and I 
think I learned a lot from that 
actually.”
Tingley said he appreciated 
the speakers’ focus on skills 
that 
cannot 
necessarily 
be 
found on a resume.
“I 
really 
appreciate 
the 
approach 
they’re 
taking 
with 
recognizing 
people’s 
disadvantages and recognize 
their abilities in their purest 
forms that aren’t necessarily 
on their resume, but really 
growing with people,” Tingley 
said.

Q&A
From Page 1A

WHITMER
From Page 1A

FARROW
From Page 1A

CSG
From Page 1A

Farrow won a Pulitzer Prize 
for his reporting on Weinstein, an 
award he shared with Jodi Kantor 
and Megan Twohey of The New 
York Times.
Farrow said while he had seen a 
shift in society and the way people 
responded to reports of sexual 
misconduct when he first wrote 
about Weinstein in October 2017, 
there were still power imbalances 
obstructing accountability.
“I think we have a long way to 
go,” Farrow said. “I don’t think 
we’ve achieved accountability, I 
don’t think we have in the media 
fully come to grips with the extent 
to which we were failing to the 
hold the powerful accountable and 
contributed to a cover-up culture. 
I don’t think we’ve extended 
the 
tentative 
steps 
towards 
accountability to all of the segments 
of society that desperately need it. 
It is still very much a set of stories 
that has been dominated by affluent 
people, white people, people with 
a public profile. All of that needs to 
change.”
Daily reporters Sammy Sussman, 
Music, Theatre & Dance sophomore, 
and Nisa Khan, Information senior, 
introduced Farrow, discussing how 
his work influenced their own. 
Sussman documented 40 years 
of misconduct allegations against 
Music, Theatre & Dance professor 
Stephen Shipps. Khan and LSA 
junior Maya Goldman, The Daily’s 
editor in chief, followed a University 
student 
through 
the 
difficult 
process of reporting a sexual assault 
to the administration.
Farrow began the conversation 
by crediting the women willing to 
go on the record for the success of 
the story and the cultural reckoning 
that followed.
“It’s important to point out what 
the sources in those stories were 

living through was exponentially 
more difficult than anything I dealt 
with as a reporter,” Farrow said. “I 
wasn’t reliving the intense personal 
trauma. I didn’t have to grapple 
with the extra dimension of not only 
might my career fall apart, but also 
I’m going to be staring down this 
very specific kind of stigma that 
sexual violence carries.”
Auletta first tried to report on 
allegations against Weinstein in 
2002 but struggled to get sources to 
go on the record. He was working on 
a profile of Weinstein for The New 
Yorker, and when he confronted 
him with allegations of rape, Auletta 
said Weinstein was enraged.
“I failed to get names,” Auletta 
said. “When I confronted Harvey 
Weinstein at the time, Harvey said 
they were consensual affairs. We 
had to decide at The New Yorker, 
are we the National Inquirer, are 
we going publish anonymous versus 
him publicly saying it didn’t happen? 
And we didn’t publish it.”
According to Auletta, Weinstein’s 
behavior was an open secret in the 
industry and for many years, rumors 
about 
him 
circulated. 
Auletta 
congratulated Farrow on being able 
to publish allegations against him. 
Farrow said previous survivors 
of sexual assault who had come 
forward with allegations against 
powerful men like Bill Cosby and 
Roger Ailes made his reporting 
possible and thanked the women 
who spoke to him for his article.
“Although I couldn’t tell those 
sources as they were doing this 
incredibly brave thing that they 
would be heard, that there would 
be a version of the universe that we 
would all live in a year later where 
people would care about their 
stories and the stories would matter 
and there would be accountability 
because of them,” Farrow said. 
“But I could say for the first time in 
recent history, hey, there are some 
slivers of precedent here that are 

promising.” 
LSA 
sophomore 
Sophie 
Underwood said Farrow’s lecture 
interested 
her 
because 
she 
eventually wants to go into the film 
and TV industry.
“Media plays a big role in society 
and in uncovering these sorts 
of events that would have just 
remained hidden because of the 
major power that certain people 
have in the industry and how they 
abuse that power, and I think that 
journalism is one of those ways 
to check that abuse of power,” 
Underwood said.
During a Q&A session, American 
Culture lecturer Emily Lawsin 
asked Farrow about the University’s 
track record on handling sexual 
assault cases, citing a 2015 survey 
which found prevalent instances 
of misconduct among students. 
Farrow said college campuses 
were among the many segments of 
society that needed to confront the 
manner in which they responded to 
claims of sexual violence.
“There are a lot of spaces that need 
serious reforms to create a safe space 
for people who should never have to 
be survivors of sexual violence again 
but too often are,” Farrow said. “In 
terms of the specific intricacies of 
Title IX offices on this campus and 
others, those systems are broken. I 
have not reported on the University 
of Michigan specifically, but across 
the country, they are broken. The 
striking thing is that both accusers 
and accused often walk away from 
Title IX processes on campus 
feeling that the process was unjust, 
that there wasn’t a fair hearing of 
facts.”
One of the audience members 
criticized Farrow for encouraging 
“McCarthyesque” 
tactics 
and 
undermining due process. Farrow 
began to address the comment, 
but the audience member left 
immediately 
after 
voicing 
his 
complaint.

“You should see my Twitter 
mentions,” Farrow said. “That’s 
tame.”
Farrow also touched on the 
politicization of sexual misconduct 
claims, 
a 
criticism 
heavily 
associated with allegations made 
against Kavanaugh during his 
Supreme 
Court 
confirmation 
hearing before the U.S. Senate in 
the fall. Professor Christine Blasey 
Ford said Kavanaugh tried to rape 
her when they were teenagers and 
Deborah Ramirez, who attended 
Yale University with Kavanaugh, 
accused him of sexual misconduct. 
Farrow and his colleague at The 
New Yorker broke news of Ramirez’s 
allegations in September.
Whether 
or 
not 
someone 
thought the allegations were true 
depended largely on political 
affiliation, with a majority of 
Democrats believing Ford and a 
majority of Republicans believing 
Kavanaugh. 
Farrow 
said 
he 
approached allegations of sexual 
assault based on the merits of 
the claims, not who was making 
them.
“Everything gets thrust into this 
cauldron of partisan mistrust, and 
what’s saddening about that is it’s 
fundamentally antithetical to what 
we do as investigative reporters,” 
Farrow said. “If the evidence is 
there, I’ll do a body of reporting 
about anyone of any persuasion … 
There is such a shrinking space for 
that kind of approach and for any 
kind of understanding that anyone 
might genuinely have that approach. 
There’s this assumption that you just 
must be on our side or the other side 
and this crushing disappointment 
when it proves out that you’re not on 
anyone’s side.”
Farrow said he hoped the 
assumption of politically motivated 
journalism would abate.
“I hate partisanship, and I hope 
fact-based reporting is the antidote 
for it,” Farrow said. 

He began his presentation by 
reading from Saturday’s official 
University statement on the 
situation, as well as an excerpt 
from DPSS Executive Director 
Eddie 
Washington’s 
official 
statement on March 17.
“The news of a shooter 
on campus was a terrifying 
and traumatic experience for 
members of our community — 
both for people near Mason Hall 
when the reports were coming in 
as well as anyone who received 
the alert from afar,” Washington 
wrote in the statement. “After a 
thorough search of Angell and 
Mason Halls, officers were able 
to confirm the reports were 
related to balloons popping in 
the area, which sounded like 
shots being fired. Even though 
this was a false alarm, we are 
grateful for members of our 
community who made the call to 
police to report it.”
Baker 
shared 
DPSS’ 
and 
Counseling and Psychological 
Services’ contact information 
and explained how students, 
parents 
and 
community 
members can register their 
cell phone numbers through 
Wolverine Access to receive 
emergency alerts. Alerts are 
offered through a text message, 

phone call or both, and the 
person registering their number 
chooses the way they wish to be 
notified.
“I read a few statements and 
I heard things, students saying, 
‘I didn’t get any type of alert,’” 
Baker said. “That’s telling me 
those students, if they haven’t 
registered for emergency alerts, 
need to make sure that they 
are. We do know that there 
were 
some 
communication 
issues in terms of how the alerts 
were sent out due to cell phone 
towers and their capacities over 
the weekend.”
Emergency alerts are also 
available through the Michigan 
app and the new version of 
the DPSS app, Baker said. He 
encouraged Assembly members to 
sign up for both text message and 
phone call notifications through 
Wolverine Access in addition to 
downloading both apps.
Baker 
continued 
his 
presentation by addressing the 
University’s protocol in the event 
of an emergency. He emphasized 
the need to use the “run, hide, 
fight” protocol implemented by 
DPSS in regards to situations 
involving an active attacker.
“It’s 
not 
necessarily 
hide 
and then run and then fight,” 
Baker said. “It is run or hide or 
fight. Again, you have to make 
that determination of what that 

means … If there’s a threat that’s 
immediately present to you, it’s 
up to you to determine what your 
response is going to be.”
Baker said investigation of 
Saturday’s events remains ongoing 
and the University and DPSS are 
looking into the delay in alerts to 
the campus community.
“The University and DPSS, 
we’ve 
already 
transitioned 
our gears into active action 
and figuring out what exactly 
happened, what happened with 
communication, what happened 
with 
responses,” 
Baker 
said. 
“We’re working on really getting 
the best of that.”
After 
Baker’s 
presentation, 
members 
voiced 
concerns 
regarding how Saturday’s situation 
was handled. LSA fifth year Cece 
Huddleston asked Baker about 
the delay of alerts from DPSS. 
Although Huddleston was not 
near Mason Hall at the time, she 
said she was very disappointed in 
the way the situation was notified 
to students across campus.
“I wouldn’t be a good LSA rep 
if I didn’t let you know that pretty 
much everybody in my community 
was 
very 
disappointed,” 
Huddleston said. “We heard in 
our group chat between 4:00 and 
4:15 about an active shooter being 
on campus, but I just looked up the 
first tweet from DPSS was at 5:04 
... Being so close to campus and not 

knowing what’s going on is very 
scary.”
Huddleston also questioned 
whether the balloon popping that 
caused reports of an active shooter 
were a malicious act. She said 
as a member of a marginalized 
community, she along with others 
in the community thought the 
balloon popping occurring during 
a vigil for the New Zealand victims 
seemed almost too convenient.
Baker said he is not directly 
involved in the investigation. 
He answered Huddleston by 
explaining that he has not heard of 
any malicious intent.
“From what I understand, the 
investigation is still ongoing,” 
Baker said. “From what I’ve been 
told, there was no malicious intent. 
I know that might differ from the 
perception of the community, but 
that’s all I can share right now.”
In 
addition 
to 
Baker’s 
presentation, 
CSG 
President 
Daniel Greene, Public Policy 
senior, along with LSA senior 
Rafik Issa and LSA senior Edward 
Samir Haraka, presented a new 
resolution 
encouraging 
the 
implementation of a well-being 
fee. If passed, the resolution would 
add a $19.33 well-being fee to 
student tuition to expand mental 
health services and attempt to 
improve overall well-being on 
campus.

