Herald Scribes Hand-Wring Over ‘Would He?’ Allen

February 4, 2014

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof kicked off quite a rumpus with his Sunday piece in which Dylan Farrow accused her adoptive father Woody Allen of sexually molesting her when she was seven years old.

Dylan Farrow’s Story

WHEN Woody Allen received a Golden Globe award for lifetime achievement a few weeks ago, there was a lively debate about whether it was appropriate to honor a man who is an artistic giant but also was accused years ago of child molestation.

Allen’s defenders correctly note that he denies the allegations, has never been convicted and should be presumed innocent. People weighed in on all sides, but one person who hasn’t been heard out is Dylan Farrow, 28, the writer and artist whom Allen was accused of molesting.

 

Well, she has been now – Kristof posted this on his blog over the weekend.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led dylan-farrow-blog480-v3me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.

For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like . . .

 

Compelling stuff, and enough to draw two columns in the Boston Herald today.

First up: Margery Eagan, who calls the allegations “sickening.”

In the days leading up to the Oscars, we’ll likely hear that Dylan is lying, crazy or both. Or we’ll hear the old dodge of critics, that we must separate the 082003stars3man from the art. Many artists — male artists, anyway — are creeps, scoundrels and worse.

But how can we separate Woody Allen’s art from the nauseating, criminal allegations Dylan Farrow first told her mother and police two decades ago? Last night, I tried watching “Annie Hall” again. Whenever Allen appeared, I didn’t see a cinematic genius. I saw a sick, monstrous father in that dim attic with his shattered little girl.

 

Next up: James Verniere, who asks this question:  “Are ‘Annie Hall’ and ‘Blue Jasmine’ any less great if their creator did what Farrow says he did?”

A better question might be, should the Times have run Kristof’s column at all? That’s the one Times public editor Margaret Sullivan asked on her blog yesterday. She doesn’t provide an answer, but she does write this: “I urge those who who have not yet done so to read Robert B. Weide’s illuminating article [in The Daily Beast]. It provides essential context.”

And a good place to start.

UPDATE: Margery Eagan replies, “Better place to start Maureen Orth’s piece — Weide completely underwhelming, plus he big time in woody camp.” Possible tiebreaker: this Guardian piece by Michael Woolf.

 

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Boston Globe Writes Off Jimmy Savile Row

October 24, 2012

The Transatlantic rumpus over alleged sexual abuse of children by the late BBC television host Jimmy Savile gets double coverage in the New York Times today. First up, this John Burns report on the latest developments in a scandal that’s turning the BBC into a pretzel.

BBC Leader Admits ‘Horror’ as a Sexual Abuse Inquiry Opens

LONDON — As the first of a battery of inquiries into Britain’s burgeoning sexual abuse scandal opened in a parliamentary committee room on Tuesday, lawmakers reacted with stunned incredulity and barely disguised anger as they sought answers to the painful questions being asked in every living room, commuter train and pub in the country.

How could this have happened, over decades, without action to stop it? How could some of the country’s most respected institutions — among them the BBC, the National Health Service, police forces in London and other areas, as well as the national prosecuting authority — have failed to bring the accused principal abuser to book? How could so many vulnerable young girls and boys — more than 200, according to the police — have been exposed to such vileness, for so long,and so blatantly, without anybody stepping in to help them?

The occasion was the opening of hearings by the House of Commons committee on culture, media and sport, and the matter at hand cascading revelations in the past month that have portrayed one of Britain’s most beloved television hosts, Jimmy Savile, who died last year at 84, as an insatiable pedophile, a predator who abused teenagers in children’s homes, in hospitals for the emotionally disturbed, in BBC dressing rooms yards from stage sets where he made himself a national idol.

Also being questioned: Why did the show “BBC Newsnight” kill an investigative report into Savile’s actions?

Here’s what the Times says:

Channel 4 television reported Tuesday that it had seen an e-mail from a BBC reporter, Liz Mackean, in which she said the editor of “BBC Newsnight,” Peter Rippon, who had shelved an investigative report she was working on, had diminished the seriousness of Mr. Savile’s abuse by saying of the victims, “The girls were teenagers, not too young,” and that “they weren’t the worst kind of sexual offenses.”

Really?

The second piece in today’s Times – and this is where it gets even more interesting – examines the role of Mark Thompson, former BBC head, future New York Times Co. CEO.

Former BBC Head Says He Had No Role in Squelching Program

Mark Thompson, the former head of the British Broadcasting Corporation who has been drawn into the scandal involving allegations of sexual abuse against the former television personality Jimmy Savile, reiterated in an interview on Tuesday that he was not aware of an investigative report prepared for the BBC program “Newsnight” into Mr. Savile’s behavior until after the investigation was canceled.

Both in the interview and in a letter to Parliament, Mr. Thompson, who is also the incoming chief executive of The New York Times Company, said that he was made aware that “Newsnight” had been investigating Mr. Savile only during a conversation with a reporter at a company holiday party last December.

Thompson’s party line:”There is nothing to suggest that I acted inappropriately in the handling of this matter.” That’s about as good a defense as the Washington Generals put up against the Harlem Globetrotters.

NYT kissin’ cousin Boston Globe runs a perfunctory pickup of the Times report, with no mention of the Thompson mishegosss.

That’s left, as the hardworking staff predicted about 10 hours ago, to the Boston Herald, which features this on page 2:

Is new Times CEO fit for print?

Ex-BBC chief accused of shelving sex abuse expose

The New York Times [NYT]’ public editor is questioning whether incoming Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson “is the right person for the job,” even as a British lawmaker has accused the former BBC director general of changing his story about the spiking of a news report on sex abuse allegations surrounding the late TV personality Jimmy Savile.

“Mark Thompson has already had to correct his version of events once. He originally implied that he knew nothing about the Newsnight investigation, before admitting that a BBC journalist had told him he had reasons to worry about it,” said Rob Wilson, a member of Parliament from Reading East, who has questioned Thompson’s role and whether there was a BBC cover up regarding Savile. “Now it appears he may have known more about the subject of the Newsnight investigation than he has previously admitted.”

The pedophile sex abuse scandal involving the late BBC TV host is the talk of Britain and the timing couldn’t be much worse for the Times, which tapped Thompson in August before the scandal erupted.

Of course, the public editor’s piling on doesn’t help either, especially with the headline “Times Must Aggressively Cover Mark Thompson’s Role in BBC’s Troubles.”

Ditto for the Globe, dontcha think?

 

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