Elon Musk had a plan to buy Twitter and undo its content moderation policies. On Tuesday, just a day after reaching his $44 billion deal to buy the company, Mr. Musk was already at work on his agenda. He tweeted that past moderation decisions by a top Twitter lawyer were “obviously incredibly inappropriate.” Later, he shared a meme mocking the lawyer, sparking a torrent of attacks from other Twitter users.
Mr. Musk’s personal critique was a rough reminder of what faces employees who create and enforce Twitter’s complex content moderation policies. His vision for the company would take it right back to where it started, employees said, and force Twitter to relive the last decade.
Twitter executives who created the rules said they had once held views about online speech that were similar to Mr. Musk’s. They believed Twitter’s policies should be limited, mimicking local laws. But more than a decade of grappling with violence, harassment and election tampering changed their minds. Now, many executives at Twitter and other social media companies view their content moderation policies as essential safeguards to protect speech.
The question is whether Mr. Musk, too, will change his mind when confronted with the darkest corners of Twitter.
The tweets must flow. That meant Twitter did little to moderate the conversations on its platform.
Twitter’s founders took their cues from Blogger, the publishing platform, owned by Google, that several of them had helped build. They believed that any reprehensible content would be countered or drowned out by other users, said three employees who worked at Twitter during that time.
“There’s a certain amount of idealistic zeal that you have: ‘If people just embrace it as a platform of self-expression, amazing things will happen,’” said Jason Goldman, who was on Twitter’s founding team and served on its board of directors. “That mission is valuable, but it blinds you to think certain bad things that happen are bugs rather than equally weighted uses of the platform.”
The company typically removed content only if it contained spam, or violated American laws forbidding child exploitation and other criminal acts.
In 2008, Twitter hired Del Harvey, its 25th employee and the first person it assigned the challenge of moderating content full time. The Arab Spring protests started in 2010, and Twitter became a megaphone for activists, reinforcing many employees’ belief that good speech would win out online. But Twitter’s power as a tool for harassment became clear in 2014 when it became the epicenter of Gamergate, a mass harassment campaign that flooded women in the video game industry with death and rape threats.
2,700 fake Twitter profiles and used them to sow discord about the upcoming presidential election between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The profiles went undiscovered for months, while complaints about harassment continued. In 2017, Jack Dorsey, the chief executive at the time, declared that policy enforcement would become the company’s top priority. Later that year, women boycotted Twitter during the #MeToo movement, and Mr. Dorsey acknowledged the company was “still not doing enough.”
He announced a list of content that the company would no longer tolerate: nude images shared without the consent of the person pictured, hate symbols and tweets that glorified violence.
Alex Jones from its service because they repeatedly violated policies.
How Elon Musk Bought Twitter
Card 1 of 6
A blockbuster deal. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, capped what seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial billionaire to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. Here’s how the deal unfolded:
The initial offer. Mr. Musk made an unsolicited bid worth more than $40 billion for the influential social network, saying that he wanted to make Twitter a private company and that he wanted people to be able to speak more freely on the service.
The next year, Twitter rolled out new policies that were intended to prevent the spread of misinformation in future elections, banning tweets that could dissuade people from voting or mislead them about how to do so. Mr. Dorsey banned all forms of political advertising, but often left difficult moderation decisions to Ms. Gadde.
landmark legislation called the Digital Services Act, which requires social media platforms like Twitter to more aggressively police their services for hate speech, misinformation and illicit content.
The new law will require Twitter and other social media companies with more than 45 million users in the European Union to conduct annual risk assessments about the spread of harmful content on their platforms and outline plans to combat the problem. If they are not seen as doing enough, the companies can be fined up to 6 percent of their global revenue, or even be banned from the European Union for repeat offenses.
Inside Twitter, frustrations have mounted over Mr. Musk’s moderation plans, and some employees have wondered if he would really halt their work during such a critical moment, when they are set to begin moderating tweets about elections in Brazil and another national election in the United States.
SEOUL — They have shown up whenever women rallied against sexual violence and gender biases in South Korea. Dozens of young men, mostly dressed in black, taunted the protesters, squealing and chanting, “Thud! Thud!” to imitate the noise they said the “ugly feminist pigs” made when they walked.
“Out with man haters!” they shouted. “Feminism is a mental illness!”
On the streets, such rallies would be easy to dismiss as the extreme rhetoric of a fringe group. But the anti-feminist sentiments are being amplified online, finding a vast audience that is increasingly imposing its agenda on South Korean society and politics.
These male activists have targeted anything that smacks of feminism, forcing a university to cancel a lecture by a woman they accused of spreading misandry. They have vilified prominent women, criticizing An San, a three-time gold medalist in the Tokyo Olympics, for her short haircut.
They have threatened businesses with boycotts, prompting companies to pull advertisements with the image of pinching fingers they said ridiculed the size of male genitalia. And they have taken aim at the government for promoting a feminist agenda, eliciting promises from rival presidential candidates to reform the country’s 20-year-old Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.
runaway housing prices, a lack of jobs and a widening income gap.
YouTube channel with 450,000 subscribers. To its members, feminists equal man haters.
Its motto once read, “Till the day all feminists are exterminated!”
The backlash against feminism in South Korea may seem bewildering.
the highest gender wage gap among the wealthy countries. Less than one-fifth of its national lawmakers are women. Women make up only 5.2 percent of the board members of publicly listed businesses, compared with 28 percent in the United States.
And yet, most young men in the country argue that it is men, not women, in South Korea who feel threatened and marginalized. Among South Korean men in their 20s, nearly 79 percent said they were victims of serious gender discrimination, according to a poll in May.
“There is a culture of misogyny in male-dominant online communities, depicting feminists as radical misandrists and spreading fear of feminists,” said Kim Ju-hee, 26, a nurse who has organized protests denouncing anti-feminists.
The wave of anti-feminism in South Korea shares many of the incendiary taglines with right-wing populist movements in the West that peddle such messages. Women who argue for abortion rights are labeled “destroyers of family.” Feminists are not champions of gender equality, but “female supremacists.”
In South Korea, “women” and “feminists” are two of the most common targets of online hate speech, according to the country’s National Human Rights Commission.
abortions were common.
mandatory military service. But many women drop out of the work force after giving birth, and much of the domestic duties fall to them.
“What more do you want? We gave you your own space in the subway, bus, parking lot,” the male rapper San E writes in his 2018 song “Feminist,” which has a cult following among young anti-feminists. “Oh girls don’t need a prince! Then pay half for the house when we marry.”
The gender wars have infused the South Korean presidential race, largely seen as a contest for young voters. With the virulent anti-feminist voice surging, no major candidate is speaking out for women’s rights, once such a popular cause that President Moon Jae-in called himself a “feminist” when he campaigned about five years ago.
has said.
It is hard to tell how many young men support the kind of extremely provocative and often theatrical activism championed by groups like Man on Solidarity. Its firebrand leader, Mr. Bae, showed up at a recent feminist rally dressed as the Joker from “Batman” comics and toting a toy water gun. He followed female protesters around, pretending to, as he put it, “kill flies.”
Tens of thousands of fans have watched his stunts livestreamed online, sending in cash donations. During one online talk-fest in August, Mr. Bae raised nine million won ($7,580) in three minutes.
legalize abortion and started one of the most powerful #MeToo campaigns in Asia.
Lee Hyo-lin, 29, said that “feminist” has become such a dirty word that women who wear their hair short or carry a novel by a feminist writer risk ostracism. When she was a member of a K-pop group, she said that male colleagues routinely commented on her body, jeering that she “gave up being a woman” when she gained weight.
“The #MeToo problem is part of being a woman in South Korea,” she said. “Now we want to speak out, but they want us to shut up. It’s so frustrating.”
On the other side of the culture war are young men with a litany of grievances — concerns that are endlessly regurgitated by male-dominated forums. They have fixated, in particular, on limited cases of false accusations, as a way to give credence to a broader anti-feminist agenda.
Son Sol-bin, a used-furniture seller, was 29 when his former girlfriend accused him of rape and kidnapping in 2018. Online trolls called for his castration, he said. His mother found closed-circuit TV footage proving the accusations never took place.
“The feminist influence has left the system so biased against men that the police took a woman’s testimony and a mere drop of her tears as enough evidence to land an innocent man in jail,” said Mr. Son, who spent eight months in jail before he was cleared. “I think the country has gone crazy.”
As Mr. Son fought back tears during a recent anti-feminist rally, other young men chanted: “Be strong! We are with you!”
Germany’s most powerful newspaper removed its top editor Monday after months of defending his sexual relationships with women in the workplace as the scandal began to envelop the paper’s globally ambitious parent company, Axel Springer.
Bild, a center-right tabloid that has fed popular anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Covid-19 restrictions, dismissed the editor in chief, Julian Reichelt, after The New York Times reported on details of Mr. Reichelt’s relationship with a trainee, who testified during an independent legal investigation that in 2018 he had summoned her to a hotel near the office for sex and asked her to keep a payment secret. Hours after Mr. Reichelt was ousted, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel published allegations that Mr. Reichelt had abused his position to pursue relationships with several women on his staff.
The dismissal marked the belated arrival of the global #MeToo movement at Axel Springer — and it came as the German company is making significant investments in the American market, including its acquisition this summer of Politico for $1 billion. Axel Springer faced pressure in the United States and Germany to explain two recent revelations: What the investigation into Mr. Reichelt’s conduct found, and how the chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, responded to the investigation. In a text message to a friend obtained by The Times, Mr. Döpfner seemed to link the scrutiny of Mr. Reichelt’s behavior to the editor’s divisive politics, casting him as a bulwark against a return of Communist-style oppression in the guise of Covid rules.
The company said in a statement that Mr. Reichelt had “not clearly separated private and professional matters,” and had misled the board. Mr. Döpfner, in a statement, also praised Mr. Reichelt for his journalistic leadership and for launching Bild-Tv, a new television station in the combative style of American cable news. He said Mr. Reichelt’s replacement, Johannes Boie, would combine “journalistic excellence with modern leadership.” Mr. Reichelt has denied abusing his authority, and didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
surge in right-wing European media while capturing a new global online generation. Its acquisition of publications like Politico and Business Insider, which it bought for $442 million in 2015, is a major part of that strategy.
The move to dismiss Mr. Reichelt was a significant reversal for a company that prides itself on standing up to Germany’s more liberal media establishment. Axel Springer had been bracing for reaction from its new American employees to the reports of Mr. Reichelt’s conduct, but two people familiar with the company’s decision Monday said that a furious storm in German media added pressure on Mr. Döpfner to act. German critics blasted the company, in particular, for its role in killing a story by a rival publisher, Ippen, whose journalists said in a letter that they were set to reveal details of Mr. Reichelt’s alleged abuse of power.
“That made the whole story bigger than it was before,” said Moritz Tschermak, the co-author of a recent book about Bild. “Somehow it became not a story about Reichelt and Springer but a story about freedom of the press.”
In an inquiry this spring, the company said it had cleared Mr. Reichelt, who apologized at the time for unspecified “mistakes” and remained in his role. Axel Springer appeared to blame the opaque German legal process in part for its reversal, releasing a statement noting that it learned some details of its own lawyers’ inquiry from the media. The company also said it had learned unspecified new information about Mr. Reichelt’s conduct, and that the editor had misled the company’s board.
Axel Springer also said in its statement that it would take legal action against third parties who it claimed tried to illegally influence the company’s compliance investigation, “apparently with the aim of removing Julian Reichelt from office and damaging Bild and Axel Springer.”
Mr. Döpfner, the chief executive, said in a statement in March. “However, having assessed everything that was revealed as part of the investigation process, we consider a parting of the ways to be inappropriate.”
Mr. Reichelt was reinstated with a co-editor in chief, Alexandra Würzbach, the editor of Bild’s Sunday edition, who had taken over his duties in his absence.
In explaining its decision on Monday to remove Mr. Reichelt as editor, the publisher cited “revelations” about his behavior that had “come to light in recent days, following media reports.”
Pressure built in Germany after Ippen Media, which publishes a group of websites as well as a print competitor to Bild in Munich, decided on Friday to pull its own in-depth investigation into Mr. Reichelt. That revelation, in The Times and then in a letter from Ippen’s own investigative team, outraged reporters in Berlin, leading one to ask Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman at a news conference on Monday whether that decision had raised concerns in the German government that freedom of the press could be in danger. Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, declined to comment.
article published Monday in the magazine Der Spiegel, which first broke the news this spring of the investigation into Mr. Reichelt. The article described Mr. Reichelt as a man “obsessed with power” who had a “pattern” of both promoting and seducing young women at Bild.
His sexual relationships with women on his staff were known in Bild’s office, Der Spiegel reported.
The magazine also raised further questions about Axel Springer’s internal investigation, which had promised anonymity to women who testified. Nonetheless, one of the women received a message from a “confidant” of Mr. Reichelt, urging her not to speak to investigators, Der Spiegel reported.
Germany’s publishing world is dominated by large companies, largely run by men, where reluctance to be seen as criticizing one another runs deep. Ippen cited such a motivation behind its last-minute decision to withhold the report.
The Frankfurter Rundschau, based in Frankfurt am Main, one of the regional newspapers owned by the Ippen Media company that had planned to publish the investigation, ran an editorial on Monday calling the decision damaging to their relationship of trust with their readers.
The German Journalists’ Association criticized Ippen’s decision not to publish the investigation. But journalists discussing the reporting also raised questions about why the world of German publishing had struggled to have its own MeToo reckoning, and why it took attention from American media to prompt this action.
As the German media world focused on the turmoil at Axel Springer, the staff of Politico, whose acquisition by Springer is expected to close as soon as this week, was largely focused elsewhere. Journalists there are considering forming a union, and organizers have set a deadline of this month to gather support.
A former television intern who became a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment has vowed to fight on after a court in Beijing ruled that she had not produced sufficient evidence in her harassment case against a star presenter.
The former intern, Zhou Xiaoxuan, told supporters and journalists outside the Haidian District court in Beijing that she would appeal after judges ruled against her claim late Tuesday night.
Ms. Zhou asserted in 2018 that Zhu Jun had assaulted her in a dressing room four years earlier. Mr. Zhu denied that accusation and sued Ms. Zhou, and she countersued him. Their legal battles became a focal case in China’s expanding movement against the sexual coercion of women.
The court in Beijing rejected Ms. Zhou’s case in a terse online statement that did not go into the substance of her claims. She had “tendered insufficient evidence to prove her assertion that a certain Zhu had engaged in sexual harassment,” the court stated.
crack their heads and spill blood” if they tried to stop its rise.
Behind the Takeover of Hong Kong:One year ago, the city’s freedoms were curtailed with breathtaking speed. But the clampdown was years in the making, and many signals were missed.
One Year Later in Hong Kong: Neighbors are urged to report on one another. Children are taught to look for traitors. The Communist Party is remaking the city.
Mapping Out China’s Post-Covid Path: Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is seeking to balance confidence and caution as his country strides ahead while other places continue to grapple with the pandemic.
A Challenge to U.S. Global Leadership: As President Biden predicts a struggle between democracies and their opponents, Beijing is eager to champion the other side.
‘Red Tourism’ Flourishes: New and improved attractions dedicated to the Communist Party’s history, or a sanitized version of it, are drawing crowds ahead of the party’s centennial.
Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has moved to rein in public protest and contention over women’s rights, and fewer such cases have burst onto the internet.
An exception was in July, when the police detained Kris Wu, a popular Canadian Chinese singer, after an 18-year-old university student in Beijing accused him of offering young women like her help with their careers, and then pressing them to have sex. He has denied the accusations.
Mr. Wu was formally arrested last month on suspicion of rape. His case became one in a number of scandals that have prompted the Chinese government to crack down on youth celebrity culture and warn actors and performers to stick to official rules for propriety.
Ms. Zhou has been barred from Weibo, the popular Chinese social media service where her claims against Mr. Zhu first spread. (His lawsuit against her has still not gone to trial.)
Traditional state-run media outlets were ordered not to cover Ms. Zhou’s claims and lawsuit, according to three journalists who received the instructions and asked for anonymity because of the risk of repercussions. But word of Ms. Zhou’s loss in court rippled across Chinese social media on Wednesday.Many reactions that remained on Weibowere critical of her, some accusing her of making up her claims and acting as a pawn for forces hostile to China. Her supporters said that, despite the setback, she had set a lasting example.
“I was very disappointed, but it didn’t surprise me,” said Zheng Xi, 34, a feminist in Hangzhou, in eastern China. “Her persistence in the last three years has educated and enlightened many people.”
More than 1,500 workers for the video game maker Activision Blizzard walked out from their jobs this week. Thousands signed a letter rebuking their employer. And even as the chief executive apologized, current and former employees said they would not stop raising a ruckus.
Shay Stein, who used to work at Activision, said it was “heartbreaking.” Lisa Welch, a former vice president, said she felt “profound disappointment.” Others took to Twitter or waved signs outside one of the company’s offices on Wednesday to share their anger.
Activision, known for its hugely popular Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and StarCraft gaming franchises, has been thrown into an uproar over workplace behavior issues. The upheaval stems from an explosive lawsuit that California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed on July 20, accusing the $65 billion company of fostering a “frat boy workplace culture” in which men joked about rape and women were routinely harassed and paid less than their male colleagues.
Activision publicly criticized the agency’s two-year investigation and allegations as “irresponsible behavior from unaccountable state bureaucrats.” But its dismissive tone angered employees, who called out the company for trying to sweep away what they said were heinous problems that had been ignored for too long.
Hollywood, restaurants and the media — the male-dominated video game sector has long stood out for its openly toxic behavior and lack of change. In 2014, feminist critics of the industry faced death threats in what became known as Gamergate. Executives at the gaming companies Riot Games and Ubisoft have also been accused of misconduct.
Now the actions at Activision may signal a new phase, where a critical mass of the industry’s own workers are indicating they will no longer tolerate such behavior.
“This could mean some real accountability for companies that aren’t taking care of their workers and are creating inequitable work environments where women and gender minorities are kept at the margins and abused,” said Carly Kocurek, an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology who studies gender in gaming.
She said California’s lawsuit and the fallout at Activision were a “big deal” for an industry that had traditionally shrugged off claims of sexism and harassment. Other gaming companies are most likely watching the situation, she added, and considering whether they need to address their own cultures.
spared little detail. Many of the misconduct accusations focused on a division called Blizzard, which the company merged with through a deal with Vivendi Games in 2008.
The lawsuit accused Activision of being a “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” Employees engaged in “cube crawls” in which they got drunk and acted inappropriately toward women at work cubicles, the lawsuit said.
In one case, a female employee died by suicide during a business trip because of the sexual relationship she had been having with her male supervisor, the lawsuit said. Before her death, male colleagues had shared an explicit photo of the woman, according to the lawsuit.
on Twitter.
Employees reacted furiously. An open letter addressed to Activision’s leaders calling for them to take the accusations more seriously and “demonstrate compassion” for victims attracted more than 3,000 signatures from current and former employees by Wednesday. The company has nearly 10,000 employees.
“We no longer trust that our leaders will place employee safety above their own interests,” the letter said, calling Ms. Townsend’s remarks “unacceptable.”
a $155 million pay package that makes him one of the country’s highest-paid executives, added that the company would beef up the team that investigated reported misconduct, fire managers who were found to have impeded investigations and remove in-game content that had been flagged as inappropriate.
Employees said it was not enough.
“We will not return to silence; we will not be placated by the same processes that led us to this point,” organizers of the walkout said in a public statement. They declined to be identified out of fear of reprisal.
A court in India on Friday acquitted a prominent journalist of charges that he raped a junior colleague, bringing an end to a politically charged case that had been closely watched as a test of a new sexual assault law.
The journalist, Tarun J. Tejpal, was accused of sexually assaulting a staff reporter for Tehelka, a well-known investigative magazine that he edited, in 2013.
Mr. Tejpal, 58, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, initially apologized to the reporter but later said the encounter had been consensual. “The truth will come out,” he told an Indian news channel in 2019.
In a statement on Friday, Mr. Tejpal thanked the judge in the court in the coastal state of Goa and repeated his assertion that he had been targeted for prosecution as part of a political vendetta against him.
has been slow to take hold in India, where public discussions of sex are frowned upon and traditional ideas of gender roles predominate in homes and workplaces.
Still, some women have gone public about sexual harassment and assault, and some have won victories in court. In February, a journalist successfully fought off a defamation suit brought by a former public official whom she had accused of sexually harassing her.
Mr. Tejpal was one of India’s best-known editors when he was arrested and charged. Tehelka, the liberal-minded magazine he led, is known for crusading public-interest journalism and has broken major stories over the years. Two decades ago, Tehelka reporters posed as arms dealers and caught Indian Army officers and members of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party — then, as now, India’s governing party — accepting bribes.
said in a statement after the accusation became public.
Mr. Tejpal initially expressed remorse about the incident, saying it had resulted from “an awful misreading of the situation.” But after the charges were filed, he said he was the victim of a right-wing “political vendetta,” and that security camera footage taken outside the elevator supported his version of events.
Mr. Tejpal, who resigned as editor of Tehelka, spent six months in jail before India’s top court released him on bail in 2014.
Since then, as the case made its way through India’s justice system at a typically glacial pace, Mr. Tejpal has largely disappeared from public life. A recent streaming series on Amazon based on a novel wrote did not include his name in the credits.
Leslie Moonves, who led CBS as chief executive for 15 years before he was ousted in 2018, will receive nothing from the $120 million the company had set aside in a potential severance package, according to a federal filing on Friday.
Mr. Moonves left CBS on Sept. 9, 2018, after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct, allegations that appeared in two articles in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow. Mr. Moonves has denied the allegations.
That October, as part of a separation agreement, the CBS Corporation board placed $120 million in a so-called grantor trust. That money would go to Mr. Moonves if the company found that there had been no grounds to fire him under his contract.
In December 2018, the board said it had determined that Mr. Moonves was indeed fired for cause, citing “willful and material misfeasance, violation of company policies and breach of his employment contract” in a statement at the time. Mr. Moonves disputed that finding and started arbitration proceedings concerning the possible exit package in January 2019.
it said.
The filing came from ViacomCBS. Mr. Moonves’s previous employer merged with a sibling company, Viacom, in December 2019, after protracted negotiations. Mr. Moonves adamantly opposed the merger plan when he was at the helm of CBS.
“The disputes between Mr. Moonves and CBS have now been resolved,” ViacomCBS said in a statement on Friday. It added that the company and Mr. Moonves would have no further comment on the matter.
Mr. Moonves, 71, was one of the most prominent figures to be toppled by the #MeToo movement. Other powerful men in the media and entertainment businesses whose careers came to an end after they were accused of sexual misconduct included the Fox News chief executive Roger E. Ailes and the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Ailes died in 2017, months after leaving the network he had helped create, and Mr. Weinstein fell from power in 2017 and was sentenced last year to 23 years in prison for sex crimes against six women.
LONDON — The body that awards Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars has suspended a prominent actor and director weeks after he received one of its top awards, following accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment and bullying from 20 women.
Producers, actresses and production assistants said the actor, Noel Clarke, secretly filmed auditions in which they were naked, groped or forcibly kissed them, and sent unsolicited intimate pictures. The testimonies were detailed in a lengthy exposé published by The Guardian on Thursday evening.
Mr. Clarke, 45, grew up in London and established himself as an actor in the 2000s with the television series “Doctor Who.” He is well-known in Britain as a filmmaker and performer for his trilogy “The Hood,” about the lives of teenagers in West London, and for the TV police dramas “Bulletproof” and “Viewpoint.” His production company, Unstoppable Film & Television, has made more than 10 movies and television shows.
Mr. Clarke denied the all accusations through his lawyers, according to The Guardian, with the exception of an episode in which he was accused of making inappropriate comments about a woman. He said he later apologized in that case.
revelations about Harvey Weinstein in The New York Times that touched off the #MeToo movement. Mr. Clarke is one of the first prominent actors to face such allegations in Britain.
In a statement provided to The Guardian, Mr. Clarke said, “In a 20-year career, I have put inclusivity and diversity at the forefront of my work and never had a complaint made against me.”
“If anyone who has worked with me has ever felt uncomfortable or disrespected, I sincerely apologize,” Mr. Clarke said, denying any sexual misconduct or wrongdoing, and dismissing the accusations as false.
The extent of the potential consequences for Mr. Clarke became clear on Friday when the television network ITV took the unusual step of saying in a statement that it would not air the finale of “Viewpoint,” a drama starring the actor, on its main channel Friday night because of the accusations against him.
rising star award in 2009, said in an earlier statement, released shortly after the article was published, that it had suspended his award and membership of the academy “immediately and until further notice.”
The Guardian report cited nearly two dozen women in the movie industry who said they had been subjected to a range of abuses that include unwanted physical contact, groping and forced kisses, as well as unsolicited sexual behavior on set, including eight on the record.
The Norwegian film producer Synne Seltveit said Mr. Clarke slapped her buttocks in 2015, and later sent an unwanted explicit sexual picture. The actress Gina Powel said Mr. Clarke exposed himself to her in a car and later groped her in an elevator, also in 2015. Anna Avramenko, an assistantfilm director, said Mr. Clarke had forcibly kissed her on set in 2008 and had tried several times again after the incident.
intimacy coordinators,” are becoming a common presence on set. Their job is to ensure sex scenes don’t compromise or exploit the performers, and recent British and Irish shows like “It’s a Sin” and “Normal People” have featured intimacy coordinators among their crew.
Onscreen, the plots of some recent British hits, like “Sex Education” and “I May Destroy You,” have turned on questions of sexual consent.
The British actress and writer Michaela Coel, who created “I May Destroy You,” in which she plays a young Londoner who investigates her own rape, said in a statement she supported the women who accused Mr. Clarke.
“Speaking out about these incidents takes a lot of strength because some call them ‘gray areas.’ They are, however, far from gray,” Ms. Coel said.
“These behaviors are unprofessional, violent and can destroy a person’s perception of themselves, their place in the world and their career irreparably.”
In his speech at the BAFTA Awards this month, Mr. Clarke, who is Black, dedicated his award to the “underrepresented, anyone who sits at home believing that they can achieve more.”
last year announced a series of changes in its nomination and prize-giving process.
For this year’s awards, BAFTA’s 6,700 voting members had to undergo unconscious bias training and watch every nominated movie before they could cast their ballots for each category — an attempt to deter voters from focusing on the most hyped films.
In the statement on Friday, BAFTA said it had asked individuals to come forward with their accounts and identify themselves.
“We very much regret that women felt unable to provide us with the kind of firsthand testimony that has now appeared in The Guardian,” it said. “Had we been in receipt of this, we would never have presented the award to Noel Clarke.”
In her email to staff on Tuesday, Ms. Reidhead acknowledged that Norton could have done more to look into the allegations. “As a publishing company we are limited in our investigative abilities,” she wrote, “but we recognize that there may be situations, such as allegations of potentially criminal conduct, where we should actively consider bringing in outside assistance.”
Some of the allegations against Mr. Bailey were reported earlier by The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate and The Los Angeles Times, and additional accusations have been reported since.
In an email to the Times last week, Mr. Bailey denied the allegations, calling them “categorically false and libelous.” A lawyer for Mr. Bailey, Billy Gibbens, called Norton’s response to the allegations “troubling and unwarranted.”
In an email on Tuesday, Mr. Gibbens added: “Norton made the drastic, unilateral decision to take Mr. Bailey’s books out of print, based on the false and unsubstantiated allegations against him, without undertaking any investigation or offering Mr. Bailey the opportunity to refute the allegations.”
Norton did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Since the #MeToo movement began, publishers have canceled contracts with a number of authors who have faced charges of sexual harassment and assault. In 2018, Simon and Schuster canceled a forthcoming book on the 2016 election by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, authors of the best seller “Game Change,” after Mr. Halperin was accused of sexually harassing women at ABC News, where he once directed political coverage.
And in March 2020, Hachette Book Group dropped a forthcoming memoir by Woody Allen amid a wave of criticism, including a walkout by employees, who cited the longstanding accusations that Mr. Allen had molested his adopted stepdaughter Dylan. (Both Mr. Allen and Mr. Halperin later found other publishers.)
Pulling books that have already been published is less common, and even Norton’s initial “pause” last week drew concern from free expression groups. In a statement last week, the National Coalition Against Censorship said books must be judged “on their content.”
“I can assure you I have never had non-consensual sex of any kind, with anybody, ever, and if it comes to a point I shall vigorously defend my reputation and livelihood,” he wrote in the email, which the Times reviewed. “Meanwhile, I appeal to your decency: I have a wife and young daughter who adore and depend on me, and such a rumor, even untrue, would destroy them.”
Norton took the allegation seriously, a spokeswoman for the publisher said Wednesday. “We did take steps, including asking Mr. Bailey about the allegations, which he categorically denied, and we were mindful of the sender’s request for a guarantee of anonymity.”
Former students recall him as a charismatic role model who treated them as intellectual peers. But he also created an atmosphere of intimacy that could cross the line, like encouraging students to write about romantic relationships in journals that they submitted to him for comments. “There was an environment of dirty jokes and permissiveness,” said Elizabeth Gross, a former student who now teaches at Tulane University. Some students said his remarks and behavior were attempts to “groom” them for sexual encounters years later.
Eve Peyton, 40, a former student who now works in publicity at a high school in New Orleans, said that Mr. Bailey raped her when she was a graduate student. When she was his student, he treated her as “one of his special girls,” she said, attention that felt flattering and reaffirming at the time.
In June 2003, she was a graduate student at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and engaged to be married. She and Mr. Bailey both happened to be visiting New Orleans at the same time and met for drinks. Afterward, he invited her back to the place he was staying, where he kissed her, initiated oral sex, and when she squirmed away, he pinned her to the bed and forcibly had sex with her, she said. He finally stopped when she told him she wasn’t using birth control, she recalled.
After he drove her to her father’s house, where she was staying, Mr. Bailey said he had “wanted her” since the day they met, when she was 12, Ms. Peyton said.
She told two friends about the assault shortly after it happened but didn’t go to the police, in part because she was overwhelmed and wanted to move on with her life, she said. She later began seeing a therapist with experience in sexual assault counseling.
