The journalist discharged him for having been silent during the rape complaint that his sister Dylan made against his father.
Ronan Farrow, son of Woody Allen, wrote a tough letter in The Hollywood Reporter magazine, where he talks about the double standards of some big American media and the protection they offer to powerful figures like his father.
In addition, Farrow recalls Allen's alleged abuse of his sister Dylan, who along with his mother, Mia Farrow, denounced him in 1993.
The letter: "My father, Woody Allen, and the danger of unasked questions"
"These are accusations. They are not in the headlines. There is no obligation to mention them." These were the objections of my producer on my network. It was September 2014, and I was preparing to interview a respected journalist about a new Bill Cosby biography. The book omitted the allegations of rape and S-l assault against the comedian, and I tried to focus on that omission. That producer was one of the many industry veterans who warned me about it. Back then, there was little more than a trial and a few women with stories, all publicly discredited by Cosby's press team. There was no criminal process. It was old news. It was not news.
So we came to a compromise: I would talk about the accusations, but only about the ending with a single question. And I warned the author, from journalist to journalist, letting him know what was coming. He seemed surprised when he brought up the subject. He was the first to ask about the fact, he said. He paused for a long time, then asked if it was essential. On air, he said that he saw the allegations and that they had not been checked.
Today, the number of complaints increased to 60. The author apologized. And the reporters who covered Cosby were forced to examine decades of omissions, of questions left unasked, stories untold. I am one of those journalists and I am ashamed of that interview.
Some reporters have drawn connections between the timid press development of the Cosby events with a painful chapter in my family history. Shortly before the Cosby allegations exploded, my sister Dylan Farrow wrote about her experience, alleging that our father, Woody Allen, had accosted her with inappropriate groping and S- assaulted her when she was seven.
Being in the media for my sister's story and having Woody Allen's press machine sprung into action gave me a window into how powerful the pressure to take the easy road can be. Every day, colleagues from news organizations forwarded to me emails fired by Allen's powerful publicist, who had spent years orchestrating a robust campaign to validate my father's S- relationship with another of my sisters. Those emails featured opinions ready to be turned into stories, complete with an offer of "validators"—therapists, friends, lawyers, anyone who could pit a young woman against a powerful man and cast her as mad, trained, and vengeful. At first, they took it to blogs, then to mainstream media that repeated those points: a self-perpetuating machine.
The list in a copy of those emails revealed the names of the journalists with whom that publicist shared relationships and mutual benefits, giving him the list of her star clients, from Will Smith to Meryl Streep. Reporters receiving this from this public relations officer would debate whether ignoring those points would keep them off the A-list of clients.
When my sister decided to break the silence, she had gone to multiple newspapers, and most of them would not touch her story. An editor at the Los Angeles Times seemed likely to publish her letter accompanied by fact-checks, but his bosses killed the article before it was published. The editor called me, disturbed. There were many relationships at stake. It was too hot for them. They fought hard. (Investigated by The Hollywood Reporter, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Times said the decision not to publish it rested with Opinion editors.)
When The New York Times finally published my sister's story in 2014, it was given 936 words online, embedded in an article with careful warnings. Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and attorney for victims of S- assault, posted it on his blog.
Soon after, the Times gave its alleged attacker double the space and prime position in print, with no qualifications or context surrounding it. It was a stark reminder of how differently our press treats vulnerable accusers and the powerful men who are accused.
Maybe I succumbed to that pressure. I worked hard to distance myself from that painful family history and keep my job unruffled. That's why I avoided commenting on my sister's accusations for years, and when cornered, I cultivated distance, limiting my responses to the occasional line on Twitter. My sister's decision to step up came shortly after she began work on a book and a television series. It was the last association she wanted to make. Initially, I begged my sister not to make the case public again and for her to avoid talking to reporters. I'm ashamed of that, too. In matters of S- abuse, everything is easier than facing it in its entirety, saying everything about the case, with all the consequences that this has. Even now, I hesitated before accepting The Hollywood Reporter's invitation to write this piece, knowing it could unleash another round of murder against my sister, my mother, or me.
But when Dylan explained his agony in the wake of powerful voices sweeping aside his accusations and the fears he represented for young girls being exposed to a predator, he ultimately knew he was right. I started talking about her more openly, especially on social media. And I began to look carefully at my own decisions in covering S- assault stories.
I believe my sister. This was always like a brother who trusts her, and even at 5 years old she was bothered by the strange behavior of our father around her, who climbed into her bed in the middle of the night, forcing her to suck his penis. finger. Behavior that forced him to go to therapy, focused on his inappropriate behavior with children, before the accusations.
But more importantly, I approached the case as a lawyer and a journalist and found her allegations credible. The facts are persuasive and well-documented. I won't list them here again, but most have been meticulously reported by Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orthen. The latest legal provision is a custody order that found Woody Allen's behavior "grossly inappropriate" and emphasized taking "steps to protect Dylan."
On May 4, The Hollywood Reporter ran an interview with Woody Allen on the front page. For me, he is a sterling example of how not to talk about his S- assaults. Dylan's allegations were never touched upon in the interview, and he received only one parenthetical mention: an inaccurate reference to the charges being "dropped." The magazine later made a correction: "They are not prosecuted" (the charges).
The correction points to how difficult Allen, Cosby, and other difficult men are to cover. The accusations were never supported by a criminal conviction. This is important. It should always be noticed. But it is not an excuse for the press to silence the victims, never to question his allegations. It makes our role more important when the legal system often finds itself more in favor of the powerful than the weak.
This is exactly what the cases that were not pursued in 1993 looked like: the prosecutor met my mother and my sister. Dylan is deeply traumatized by the assault and the ensuing legal battle that forced her to repeat the story over and over again. (And she told her story over and over again, without inconsistency, regardless of the emotion that grappled with it.) The longer that battle lasted, the more grotesque the media circus around my family became. My mother and the prosecutor decided not to place my sister in any more years of violence. In a rare move, the prosecutor publicly announced that he had "probable cause" to prosecute Allen, but blamed his decision not to do so "on the frailty of the victim."
My mother still believes that she was the only option she had to protect her daughter from her. But it's ironic: My mother's decision to place Dylan's welfare above all else became a means for Woody Allen to smear them both.
Very often, women with accusations do not press charges. Too often, those who do have to pay dearly for it, face a judicial system and culture that tear them apart. The role of a journalist is not to bring water to these women. But we must include the facts and take them seriously. Sometimes, we are the only ones who can play that role.
Confronting a subject with allegations of a woman or daughter not backed by a simple legal warrant is difficult. It means having tough conversations in newsrooms and burning bridges with public figures. It means going against angry fans and publicists.
There are more journalists than ever showing that courage and more media supporting them. Many are of a new generation. BuzzFeed was a pioneer in publishing recent stories of S- assault in Hollywood. It was Gawker who asked why the allegations against Bill Cosby were not taken more seriously. And he is encouraged that The Hollywood Reporter asked me to write this response. Things are changing.
But the slow evolution of old-school journalism has helped create a culture of impunity and silence. Amazon paid millions to work with Woody Allen, financing a new series and movie. Actors, including some I deeply admire, continue to star in his films. "It's not personal," one of them once told me. But it hurts my sister every time one of her heroes, like Louis C.K., or a star her age, like Miley Cyrus, works with Woody Allen. Staff is exactly what it is. To my sister and women everywhere with S assault accusations that never went to justice.
Tonight the Cannes Film Festival opened with a new Woody Allen film. There will be press conferences and a red carpet for my father and his wife (my sister). He will have his stars by his side: Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Steve Carell, and Jesse Eisenberg. You can be confident that the press will not ask you about those issues. It is not time, it is not the place.
That kind of silence isn't just wrong. It is dangerous. It sends a message to victims that it's not worth the heartbreak to come. It sends a message about who we are as a society, what we will see, what we will ignore, and who cares and who doesn't.
We are witnessing a change in how we talk about S- assault and abuse. But there is more work to be done, to build a culture where women like my sister are no longer treated as invisible. It's time to ask tough questions.
