Ben Smith, Junot Díaz, and How the Anti-#MeToo Sausage Gets Made

A report that author Junot Díaz was “cleared” of sexual misconduct allegations shows how media outlets run cover for powerful men.

Jude Ellison S. Doyle

A close-up of the delete key on a computer.
“Delete” is always located next to “power.” Photo by Ujesh Krishnan on Unsplash

The #MeToo movement was a triumph of journalism as much as anything else. Prior to the October 2017 expose of Harvey Weinstein at the New York Times, reporters often treated sexual assault and harassment claims as “he-said-she-said,” even when it was one “he” against several dozen “shes.” What reporters Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey showed was that, with careful, diligent investigation, after working for months or years to corroborate victims’ stories, reporters could verify those allegations.

This year, on November 28, Semafor editor in chief Ben Smith set out to prove that one could also clear an alleged abuser with reporting. How do you do that? Simple: You just don’t do an investigation.

Smith’s piece, “Junot Díaz in Limbo,” caused a minor uproar on Twitter when it first came out. Its errors were quickly pointed out in a viral Twitter thread by Felicia Sonmez. The piece is a sad-sack male-victim-of-#MeToo piece of the sort we’ve already seen many times. Smith announces that Díaz has been “cleared” of sexual misconduct, and sets out to prove that Díaz’s life and…

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Responses (10)

What are your thoughts?

Incredibly well written. This could be used in sociology, sexuality and sexual health education, gender studies, and advocacy education as a model for how research and empiricals can be used to make visible the foundational inequities remaining in…...

Yet reporting — in this case; in others — is precisely what Smith appears not to have done. Smith’s failures matter because they are the failures of an industry; they are an object less...

This is maddening, but sadly not all that surprising. Agreeing with Jaimie H, this was an incredibly well written and important piece.

Incisive. Illuminating. Please keep writing. A great case study for disruptive redesign of systems - how systems are patterned in by power and reinforced by loops of mistruth / mis measurement / mis mgmt of info.