Musivision Films

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

Ms. Waxman’s piece was prompted by a Times investigation published last week that found that Mr. Weinstein had sexually harassed numerous women over nearly three decades, and that he had paid at least eight settlements to these women. As a result of the article, Mr. Weinstein was fired from his company on Sunday.

We asked The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, to respond to Ms. Waxman’s allegations. Here is what he said:

I wasn’t here in 2004. But it is unimaginable to me that The Times killed a story because of pressure from Harvey Weinstein, who was and is an advertiser. After all, The Times is an institution that has published investigative reporting that caused our Chinese-language website to be blocked in China.

The top two editors at the time, Bill Keller and Jill Abramson, say they have no recollection of being pressured over Ms. Waxman’s story. And her direct editor, Jonathan Landman, suggested she didn’t have it nailed. The story we published last week took months of work by two experienced investigative reporters. It included the on-the-record accounts of numerous women who were harassed by Mr. Weinstein. It also included the fact that Mr. Weinstein paid settlements to keep women from talking. I’m sure Ms. Waxman believes she had a story. But if you read her own description, she did not have anything near what was revealed in our story. Mainly, she had an off-the-record account from one woman.