The Press Box - Babe.net and the Difficulties of Reporting on Sexual Misconduct | Damage Control (Ep. 415)

Episode Date: January 19, 2018

The Ringer’s Justin Charity and K. Austin Collins unpack the media firestorm surrounding a Babe.net article about Aziz Ansari (1:00). Then, Ringer colleague Kate Knibbs joins for a conversation about sexual misconduct and high-profile apologies (16:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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playing guests the lines more importantly the ringer nfl show subscribe right now on apple podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcast i'm justin charity and i'm cameron collins welcome to damage control on the channel 33 network a podcast where we unpack what upsets excites and divides us in popular culture today we're speaking with ringer staff writer kate nibs about the awkward art of a But first, we're talking about Aziz Ansari, Babe.net, and the backlash to Me Too. So this week, a damage control first. We're going to have a guest. Granted someone from the ringer, but our friend Kate Nibs.

But before that, we really got to sit down and talk about this babe.net piece. Babe.net is a young, newish feminist website that published a controversial account of one woman's date with the popular comedian, Aziz Ansari. And she has a pseudonym in the piece, Grace. in the piece she alleges that a date with Ansari ended with her getting repeatedly pressured into sex. It's been a controversial piece for a couple of reasons. Chief among them has just been the fact that a lot of men and a lot of supporters of men refuse to grapple with the idea of sexual coercion as a real sort of intimidation. And the varieties of things that sexual coercion can entail.

It's been very complicated conversation. But another reason for the controversy and one that we're really going to be dealing with today is just that Babe reported this story in what has been argued to be a slapdash, amateurish, sensationalized way. There's a real cause for split opinion when it comes to Babe's reporting here, because on the one hand, this account has sparked a real, I want to say, unique conversation about what sexual coercion is and what it looks like and why men don't seem to recognize it as coercion when it's described to them. Right. But on the other hand, Babe is not the New York Times. They didn't really handle Grace's account with the sort of apparent care in reporting and even just the care of pros that the New York Times would and has with regard to other people accused of various levels of sexual misconduct.

So even in the context of having this valuable conversation, the Babe piece is a bit of a head scratcher and makes a lot of people uncomfortable. How would you describe the tone of this piece? This is something I've been trying to kind of, in this conversation, trying to grapple with myself, just what is it that when I initially read this, when I initially got a text about it in a group text, that this had dropped? I read it and I had a feeling I couldn't quite put my finger on why it didn't seem to be up to the task of what it was trying to present to us. Do you know what I mean?

Instinctively, I was like, something about this is not working. it's almost written with a confessional tone. It's a weird piece of writing because it's doing impersonations of other writing. And the piece has certain ticks that don't feel totally natural and consistent with the goal of the piece. One thing that a lot of people have focused on is sort of a weird detail is when the reporter sort of has one paragraph that's underscored to, where Grace underscores that the choice between, like, red and white wine in Aziza's apartment and her not having a choice and whether she has red wine or white wine. And stuff like that where it's just like they're just weird obsessions with detail and the piece that aren't really germane to or supportive of what Grace has come forward to babe to tell them about. And granted, like, this is a complicated, difficult conversation because, well, this is partially

clarifying for everyone who's been responding, and there's been responses in Jezebel, an Atlantic, New York Times, et cetera, is just sort of, what are the details and what is the style and what is the kind of work that needs to go into this sort of piece? Like, why do we all seem to have a sense of the way that this piece is supposed to look? You know, one instructive thing I have found in all this is that the, uh, the, I want to say the skepticism of the Babe piece, which I don't want anyone to confuse with skepticism of Grace's account.

Right. Two different things. Right, yeah. Grace's account per se is a credible account. There's not, I don't think anybody's really, no one, in so much as there has been a lot of criticism of this piece,

it's not that people are saying, this probably didn't happen. It's people questioning, like you say, the style of the piece. And the sort of backlash to babe. that net has been interesting to watch because it underscores how much style actually is a part of why you believe a news article or how you process a news article. Things like editing matters in ways that the average reader doesn't necessarily perceive in a first order way. Style matters in

ways that readers don't necessarily perceive in a first order way. And Babe as a relatively young website doesn't necessarily seem to appreciate that. And I think that that is what shows in the piece. It's just this very, it's this inattentiveness to style that sort of shatters the account, even though you believe the core account in the story. Right. I mean, and we're using the word style, and I think that's the right word to use, but it's really like what the style of the piece suggests about the amount of reporting,

the amount of legwork, the amount of homework, like, into this piece. I operate from a sense of ethically, I believe, that always we believe victims. But as journalists, it is our job to find ways of telling this story that do service to the story. And that do write by the subjects of the story. Do right by the subjects. Right. It's like being careful. I, after I read this for the first time, I mean, frankly, I keep on my phone and on my computer, I keep open the tabs of Jody Cantor's reporting in the New York Times and Ronan Faro's and the New Yorker, and I go back to them, semi-regularly. I revisit them, but particularly after reading this, I went back and looked back at those

pieces and I said, okay, I didn't need this piece to be, right? I mean, asking someone to be Jody Cantor is asking a lot. But, because she's just, you know, she really, she wrote the, she did the reporting that is the reason that we are all still talking about these stories. Right. But accordingly, that is the hurdle to me. You know, like, you don't have to be Jody Cantor, but you do have to approach these things with that level of professional regard, that level of precision. Because the stakes here are way too high.

And it's not a matter of do I walk away from this piece feeling like I believe the victim or not? I believe the victim. and I believe in the victim's intentions. But this is one of the first times where I read a piece and I thought, I do not trust this website's intentions. Right. You know, the word that's getting bandied about right now is witch hunt, which is a flawed and terrible and stupid term in a lot of reasons,

and I don't believe in victims being people who are out for a witch hunt. But this is the first time I read a piece where I thought, this website is treating this like a rat race. this website is treating it like something I don't want to say less serious but maybe that's what I mean competitive competitive it's crass to me

it's crass to me well I'll tell you what so we we aren't the only people who have had this strain of reaction to the baby that net takes everybody's got takes I'll say this babe.net publishes this article about Aziz Ansari

So you know how the internet works. It works in cycles of... The internet works in cycles and waves of nonsense. So the first wave of response to the viral Aziz Ansari account is a couple of articles. One by Caitlin Flanagan at the Atlantic and one by Barry Weiss at the New York Times. And they're both condescending. They're both condescending articles that... They're both articles that are like, so what?

You know, sounds like you're... describing a bad date, sometimes guys get a little handsy, you just shove them off. What do you want for me? Absolutely. Right. That's one vein of the response to the debate. Let's put that, I'm going to put that in the timeout corner of the spectrum. Sure. And then on the other half is the criticism that is what we're talking about. I think Jezebel published the best version of the critique that we're talking about. Julianne Escobedo Shepard wrote a piece called, Babe, what are you doing? Which is so a great headline. I just want to say. I want to read a bit of Julianne's piece.

Please do. The revelation that grace didn't come to Babe, Babe came to Grace, raises questions about the website's eagerness to tell this kind of story and why. Reporting on sexual violence and misconduct is an incredibly delicate undertaking that requires a working understanding about how best to do it. At its most basic level, this means that reporters must be careful not to retramatize subjects, which includes consideration of the ways that their reports will be received. That is, often with skepticism and disbelief, and account for that with journalists' sharpest tools, fidelity to confirmable facts through arguments, and an abiding lack of sensationalism. Yes.

That and right. She preaching. Right. Frankly. Julianne preaching. But those qualities, she says at the end, fidelity to facts, arguments, abiding lack of sensationalism, those are qualities that are absent in the original babe story and then are absent in sort of all of babes follow up to their sort of moment in the spotlight right now. They haven't really, you know, I feel like a different website, a Jezabel, if you will, a different website if they had published an account like this and it's sort of blown up like this, they might have looked at this as a moment. to sort of step out, to step out into the media, to step out into cable news cycles, to step out

with, you know, whether they're standing by how they reported the story, or whether they're saying, you know, we're thinking over a lot of this criticism, but we still think the story is, like, whatever angle you want to take on it, you would think that they would step out vocally and thoughtfully and sort of proactively and have a sort of, just have it together. You would think they would just have it more together than Babe does. Babe is sort of not really, no one really knows where Babe.comnet is except for an email that leaked. The reporter of the babe.comnet story, Katie Way sent in response to an interview request that one of Ashley Banfield's producers sent following the publication of the story, Katie Way sent this like,

very ludicrous like I don't care about Ashley Banfield I don't care about cable news like you know we're the shit

this is our story yada yada yeah it's just like it's this long shit talking email of like we refuse to explain ourselves we're the future of media we're the young rebels without a pause et cetera et cetera et cetera it's this weird

posturing email on the end of the email she's like I'm 22 And everybody who saw this email go viral online got to the part where she says, I'm 22. And they're like, yeah, we know. We read this email. It reads like it was written by a 22 year old. Just to bring it back home. Like, that's what the bait that and that story feels like.

It feels like a story broken by a 22 year old. Yes. And a 22 year old not surrounded by people who know how to manage and direct and support a 22-year-old report. Right. Or a reporter, period. The moment that comes to mind for me, whenever I read an article, a piece of reporting that raises not the questions it intends to raise, but the meta questions about who didn't edit this, how wasn't this properly fact checked or processed or, you know, like pushed back against in the editing room. I just think back to, you know, like that moment in all the prejudice and men where they think they have the story. and an editor says, you don't have the story yet. Get back out there and keep working on the story. Like that moment of someone in the room saying, this is not it. This is not ready.

This is undercooked. This story needed to be shepherded through a much more rigorous process. And I think it's really, it's a shame because I think back to that Rolling Stone piece from a few years ago by Sabrina Ederley, a rape on campus. And the fallout of that piece, the extent to which the, victim's story was proven false, the trial that ensued, the journalistic career that was ruined, the way that Rolling Stone was tarnished by this. If that was not a moment for us to all collectively as journalists, as media figures, sit back and think, okay, I mean, we should have

already, frankly, things like this should not have happened. We should already have been taking these things with the utmost sort of professional seriousness. But that was certainly a moment. where you think, look at how the conversation about victims got overtaken by this bad journalism. There is a demand for this sort of journalism that not just the New York Times and the New Yorker can satisfy every single day of the news cycle. And so someone's going to rush into fill it, but I don't know that every website under the sun needs to rush as haphazardly, maybe as Babe. rushed in. For me, this is very clear. The fact of the matter is that despite the great, clear, effective, rigorous, world-changing work of all the journalists you mentioned at the New Yorker,

the New York Times, also right now people at Detroit News reporting on Larry Nasser. Despite all of that, we still live in a world that does not believe victims. So that is a call to step your game up. And there really can't be if sands or butts about that. This is a time to be really serious. If you do not have the story, if you don't have the reporting, wait till you have the story. Wait till you have the reporting. We can't afford things like this. So you should say, in response to the Babe piece, Aziz Ansari issued a statement, not an apology, but a statement describing the encounter as he understood it.

In the grand scheme of things, this was not really sufficient for most. for a lot of people as an apology. And that's got me and Cam thinking a lot about the nature of public apologies. And thankfully, we work with someone, our friend Kate Nibbs, who has written about apologies for theringer.com. So we have Kate on the podcast this week. Kate, hello. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us.

You picked such a fun topic to discuss. The topic picked us. It's worthy. I'm glad to discuss it. Well, okay, first of all, I want to say, Kate, you didn't just write something you, oh, I wrote some piece by apologies. You wrote like a, you wrote a pretty comprehensive apologies piece. I read a lot of apologies.

Why are you? What's with you in apologies? Why are you saying apologies? Well, I mean, I guess I should say first off that I don't think that any apology, even one that's executed perfectly, is a sufficient response to sexual misconduct or allegations. I think that what you do after apologizing is definitely going to be what matters most. But at the same time, one of the reasons I was, like, obsessed with looking at these apologies and why a lot of people were is because it's a good first step. An apology that actually owns up to bad behavior, I think, opens a door to reconciliation at least.

And a lot of the statements from people accused of misdeeds, you know, failed to clear that bar. What does that mean? Well, a lot of the apologies that came from people who were accused, from Charlie Rose to Matt Lauer to Luis C.K., they would express regret and they would express sadness that people felt that way. about their behavior, but they wouldn't actually specifically take responsibility for that behavior. There's no, they didn't accept culpability for what people said they had done. And I think that if you're not taking responsibility, then you're not really apologizing. Right.

I mean, my question is, generally when I see one of those kinds of apologies, this feels overly managed by a lawyer. Yeah. Right? And I'm wondering as someone who's looked at this specific phenomenon more closely than I have. What is the extent to which just a lot of this is just legal management? Like is, you know, when you confess to sexual misconduct and an apology, you would seem to be opening yourself up to other problems, right?

Like legally, you know? Yeah, I think that Justin used a phrase pro forma, and I think that's fitting. Like, this is just your boilerplate response. Now we've gotten to the point. where this has happened so many times that I wouldn't be surprised if, like, the big publicist PR firms have, like, a template. Like, they have to say something. Certainly a sense of just, this is what has been said about you.

These are the, like, these are the allegations. And so here's how you can kind of talk your way around these things, while also being sure not to insult victims, or also being sure to have a statement at the end that's like, I support this movement. Yeah. I support this moment. You know, it's so weird. It is surreal.

But one thing that perplexes me is that on the one hand, this is these apologies are pro forma, and we all recognize that they're pro forma. And yet, online, we only seem to take them more and more seriously, you know? Like, one thing I observe is that there seems to have sprung up. an entire genre of arts criticism around apologies, of like critiquing apologies, giving people copy edits on public apologies, like treating public apologies like they are just public relations material, which they are. Right.

But then it's weird to take them seriously in the first place. You know what I mean? It feels like a weird paradox of these statements are totally meaningless, but we engage with them as. if they're sincere? Yeah, it's hard to figure out how seriously to take them honestly, you know, because I don't want to dismiss them outright, but you also have to acknowledge that this person is desperately trying to salvage their reputation.

And, yeah, it's a tricky balance for someone who is critiquing, like, public personas. I don't really know what the best way to go about, like, evaluating these apologies is, to be honest. Well, I think it depends on having a few more models of apology that seem worth reckoning with in a serious way rather than always. Obviously, these should always be subject to scrutiny. I think we should, I think we deserve better apologies so that we can have better conversations. Yes. And I'm wondering what you think of Dan Harmon's apology recently. Dan Harmon is a comedian.

He was a showrunner of the show community. And on Twitter, one of the former writers for that show, Megan Gant, made remarks about sexual misconduct during her time on the show. And what we got out of that from Dan Harmon was an eight-minute apology on his podcast. We should play a clip of that for you guys right now. I got overt about my feelings after it was wrapped and said, oh, I love you. And she said the same thing she'd been saying the entire time in one language or another. Please, don't you understand that focusing on me like this, liking me like this, preferring me like this? I can't say no to it.

and when you do it, it makes me unable to know whether I'm good at my job. And so I continued to do the cowardly thing and continued to do the selfish thing. Now I wanted to teach her a lesson. I wanted to show her that if she didn't like being liked in that way, then, oh boy, she should get over herself after off. if you're just going to be a writer, then this is how just writers get treated. And that was probably the darkest of it all.

So, Kay, I would love to know how you feel about just how, how, why this stands out. Well, he actually accepts responsibility for his behavior. And that is a great leap forward in the celebrity apology standard. We didn't, we don't see that very often. And, you know, I still remain a little. wary of taking apologies seriously, but this really does seem authentic and specific and earnest and not like a publicist was holding a gun to his head. You know, it for the length and the, at least sound, it sounded off the cuff, it sounded from the

heart. Right. He doesn't give himself slack. It's refreshing to hear someone specifically own up to their misdeeds. He doesn't say, I'm sorry, I made her feel that way. He's saying he's sorry that he did it. It's hard to apologize. And, yeah, I think he did a good job.

And, you know, one thing that really stands out to me about this apology is that he is very careful, and I think this is what's missing from a lot of them, to summarize all the ways, all the things she was telling. him the entire time. And to be sure to accurately give a sense of, like, understanding why this was wrong, understanding that he was putting her in a position, as he recounts her saying of just, you know, when you give me this sort of special kind of romantic treatment around my colleagues, it A, makes me less certain of whether or not I'm actually good.

it be makes me look bad in front of everyone else, right? Like it's understanding things like that, like understanding the way this functions of a professional environment, which is a specific subset of these. Yeah. It was really important for me to hear him more than once re-describe the red flags that she'd been raising.

That was really important to me. Yes. Even with the Dan Harmon apology, there's this sense that he is, apologizing to Megan Gantz in real time, right? The way he talks on the podcast, it's sort of, this is fresh. This is like a development in his personal history with Megan Gantz. It's him apologizing right now on this podcast.

I am always surprised that a public apology doesn't come out and say, hey, I talk to this person privately. This is like maybe a public follow-up to this where I apologize or I give some sort of vague public statement, but the real apology happened privately to the person who is actually the subject of my bad behavior. That's the thing about public apologies that always makes them seem ridiculous to me because they prioritize the public. Like, I am not the victim of Harvey Weinstein.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, Harvey Weinstein needs to apologize to, like, dozens of women before he talks to me about anything. And public apologies are always performative. and that like saps them of authenticity at least a little bit. And I think one of the reasons why I find myself able to say that I like the Dan Harmon apology is because Megan Gans accepted it. Yes, right.

If she was like, actually this is bullshit, then I would probably, you know, not be comfortable believing that it was authentic. And I feel like the best way to go about it is probably for them to apologize in person or if, the person doesn't want to talk to them by letter or email, and then based on what the person wants, go public with it. Sure. You know, I mean, you know, and I think you're both right. I will say that what's unique about this apology is that you can tell as you listen that what he's largely doing is describing his behavior to other men who may or may not understand the ways in which

they're acting are problematic. And there's certainly a conversation to be had about whether that should be sandwiched into his apology to this specific woman. But a very clear part of his apology is this was behavior that I had normalized. These were excuses that I'd made, like laying out the patterns of behavior. And I think that's really, I think he clearly understands it in the context of apologizing for sexual misconduct right now. That he is a, he's becoming a model, even as he's speaking, he's becoming a model for a lot of the apologies that aren't happening. and a lot of the conversation is treading this water of people not understanding what coercion is. And he's very clearly laying out a case of this is what coercion means from someone who was coercive.

That's an important part of the public part for me. Yeah, and one thing I've been thinking about is I want men to help other men behave better. But also the last thing that I ever want to go out into the world is a bunch of movies written by Aziz. sorry and James Franco that turn this into art. You know what I mean? Described a nightmare. I know. I know.

Please don't speak it into being. Jesus. Yeah. Like, I don't want this wave of men dissecting their own mistakes via art. And profiting from that. Yeah. So it's all mushy and gross terrain that we walk. All right, Kate.

Thanks for joining us. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Cameron Collins. Until next time on damage control. Hi, Bachelor Nation. This is Juliet Litman, host of the Bachelor Party podcast. A new season of The Bachelor is in full swing, and so the podcast is back, but this time I have my own feed.

You can find new episodes every Monday night by going to the ringer.com slash podcast or by subscribing to Bachelor Party wherever you get them. Come for the recaps and roses, stay for the drama, and for moments like this. Please tell me you don't already have a little wiener. I do not have this. So, yeah, you did good.

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