HOLLYWOOD CESSPOOL: Matt Damon and Russel Crowe Helped NY Times Bury Weinstein Story in 2004

[link to www.thegatewaypundit.com]


As previously reported, embattled Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is the subject of a devastating expose detailing decades of sexual harassment.

So far the Hollywood elites have yet to condemn serial predator Harvey Weinstein.

Weinstein is also one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors, having raised mega bucks for the failed Democrat presidential candidate.


Hollywood literally worshipped Weinstein. Gross.

In March 2012 Hollywood actress Meryl Streep praised serial predator Harvey Weinstein as “god” at the Golden Globes.
The audience loved it.

Last Thursday, The New York Times blew the roof off of the decades long ‘open secret’ in Hollywood that Harvey Weinstein was essentially a sexual predator who preyed on young starlets. Weinstein reportedly paid off several sexual harassment accusers over the years.

An investigation by The New York Times found previously undisclosed allegations against Mr. Weinstein stretching over nearly three decades, documented through interviews with current and former employees and film industry workers, as well as legal records, emails and internal documents from the businesses he has run, Miramax and the Weinstein Company.

During that time, after being confronted with allegations including sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact, Mr. Weinstein has reached at least eight settlements with women, according to two company officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

So how did this sexual abuse go on and on seemingly out in the open without reporters chomping at the bit to publish the story?

It turns out that Weinstein has media enablers as well.

The New York Times had the story all the way back in 2004 and squashed it after Weinstein himself appeared at the NYT headquarters and muscled the paper into silence.

Sharon Waxman is the founder of The Wrap and a former New York Times reporter. She said she “gagged” when she read Jim Rutenberg’s sanctimonious piece on Saturday about the “media enablers” who kept this story from the public for decades.

Waxman wrote about having the Weinstein scoop when she was a new reporter at the New York Times back in 2004 but after Weinstein, Matt Damon and Russel Crowe pressured her to stop her hit piece, the story was gutted.

Via The Wrap:

In 2004, I was still a fairly new reporter at The New York Times when I got the green light to look into oft-repeated allegations of sexual misconduct by Weinstein. It was believed that many occurred in Europe during festivals and other business trips there.

I also tracked down a woman in London who had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein. She was terrified to speak because of her non-disclosure agreement, but at least we had evidence of a pay-off.

The story I reported never ran.

After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.

I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known. I knew he was a major advertiser in the Times, and that he was a powerful person overall.

But I had the facts, and this was the Times. Right?

Wrong. The story was stripped of any reference to sexual favors or coercion and buried on the inside of the Culture section, an obscure story about Miramax firing an Italian executive. Who cared?

The Times’ then-culture editor Jon Landman, now an editor-at-large for Bloomberg, thought the story was unimportant, asking me why it mattered.

Read Waxman’s full story at The Wrap here.