The New York Times publishes its investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment

The New York Times’ investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment brought allegations against a powerful film producer into public view and exposed a larger question: how misconduct could persist when secrecy, workplace power, and private settlements made it difficult to confront. Its publication in October 2017 became a catalyst for further reporting and for women speaking publicly about experiences across industries and countries.

Origins and reporting approach

The project took shape in the wake of the reporting on Bill O’Reilly and Fox News. That earlier work had shown how settlements and their financial and legal trails could reveal a story rather than bury it. As women reacted to the disclosures about O’Reilly, editors at The New York Times saw a rare opportunity to ask more people to speak on the record. The reporting also suggested a method: look for patterns of behavior and the arrangements that kept them hidden, rather than treating each allegation as an isolated case.

Rebecca Corbett asked Jodi Kantor to pursue two connected questions: whether other powerful men were concealing abusive behavior toward women, and what systems made sexual harassment so pervasive and difficult to address. After receiving advice to look toward Hollywood, Kantor and Megan Twohey discussed how to approach women who might be reluctant to talk. Twohey drew on her earlier work with rape victims, emphasizing that a person’s account might help protect others. The appeal offered a reason to speak without promising that publicity would be easy or that the past could be changed.

The inquiry was therefore not limited to identifying an individual wrongdoer. Its wider frame considered how settlements could mask repeated misconduct and how institutional practices affected the possibility of reporting it. The investigation’s significance lay both in the allegations it brought forward and in its attention to the conditions that had allowed them to remain difficult to see.

Publication and its immediate effects

The Weinstein story helped make the subject of workplace sexual harassment newly visible. In the weeks after the first article, The New York Times and other news organizations received an overwhelming flow of tips from women in the United States and beyond. The accounts were not yet a verified record simply by arriving; they formed a large, urgent body of leads that journalists across news organizations began investigating.

The investigation also changed the terms in which the public could understand the allegations. Harvey Weinstein’s name became a cautionary example of what could happen when misconduct went unchecked for years, and of how behavior previously minimized could be understood as part of a more serious pattern. A growing public consensus treated speaking about harassment and abuse as admirable rather than shameful or disloyal, while employers faced a new warning that tolerating such conduct could carry serious consequences.

The work expanded beyond Hollywood. The Times’ sexual-harassment team investigated accounts from restaurant workers, ballet dancers, domestic and factory workers, Google employees, models, prison guards, and others. In a separate investigation, Jodi Kantor and two colleagues documented accounts from five women about Louis C.K.; within less than a month, he lost the distribution of a forthcoming film, the backing of his television network, and the support of his agency, manager, and publicist. That rapid sequence illustrated how reporting could connect testimony with professional accountability.

A wider wave of response

In autumn 2017, women from many walks of life shared #MeToo accounts on social media, often without the months of trust-building and persuasion required in the Weinstein investigation. Megan Twohey, taking a break from work one night, saw posts from women she knew and wept. The change was not only in the volume of accounts but in the confidence that speaking might produce action.

As more women came forward, businesses and other institutions investigated and dismissed leaders. Those consequences strengthened the expectation that telling the truth could matter, encouraging further disclosures. The resulting public scrutiny reached well beyond individual cases: practices such as sexual overtures from a boss, mandatory arbitration policies that kept harassment claims secret, and conduct treated as trivial in everyday settings all came under renewed question. The reporting did not by itself account for every part of this movement, but it helped make a wider examination possible.

The longer aftermath

The effects continued into the following years and took different forms for the women whose accounts had entered the reporting. Ashley Judd received public praise and awards, accepted a future teaching post at Harvard Kennedy School, joined the board of Time’s Up, and filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein alleging harassment, defamation, and lost career opportunities. Laura Madden, a former Miramax assistant who had spoken about being harassed in Dublin decades earlier, remained soft-spoken even as she met other participants in person.

Zelda Perkins, another former Miramax employee, had publicly broken her settlement nondisclosure agreement after the story appeared, while withholding details that would identify the colleague she had sought to protect, Rowena Chiu. Perkins went on to challenge confidential settlements in the media and in the British Parliament. Chiu, who had not yet spoken publicly, later described the particular difficulty of deciding whether to tell her account: she worried about the disruption to her life and about the scarcity of Asian voices speaking about such experiences. Her hesitation made plain that public attention did not remove the personal and cultural costs of disclosure.

On January 16, 2019, twelve women who had been part of the reporting met in Los Angeles at the journalists’ request. The gathering revisited a question the reporters had considered during the investigation: what happened to women after they spoke up? Its participants differed sharply in public recognition and economic security. Kim Lawson, a McDonald’s worker who had been homeless six months earlier and was then earning $10 an hour, sat in the same room as women from film and public life. Lawson described filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and joining a September strike; she had spoken publicly, given interviews, and pushed her daughter in a stroller during the march. Perkins spoke of her activism against confidentiality agreements. Their accounts showed that speaking out could bring new authority and solidarity, while leaving the material and personal differences among women unmistakable.