Sean Combs and Harvey Weinstein Put NDAs Back in the Spotlight (Commentary)

Editor’s note: Nearly a decade after helping topple Roger Ailes, former Fox News hosts Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky remain silenced to varying degrees by non-disclosure agreements about what happened on the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel. As people like Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs face new sexual criminal charges in the courts, the co-founders of Lift Our Voices are advocating for a new push for the #MeToo Movement and stopping predators from keeping the survivors of their crimes out of the public eye. public. .

With the recent indictment of Sean “Diddy” Combs, yet another high-profile man has been credibly accused of horrific sexual assault and misconduct, paving the way for another major industry to have its #MeToo moment.

We’ve been here before.

In July 2016, one of us, Gretchen, was the first to file a sexual harassment complaint against then-Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes, setting off a reckoning over how women were treated by one of the most powerful men in the media.

In April 2017, one of us, Julie, filed another lawsuit against Fox News and Ailes, also for sexual harassment and retaliation. That same day, the New York Times broke a devastating story about how many women were allegedly sexually harassed by Fox’s biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, and how they were silenced by forced arbitration and non-disclosure agreements, allowing the host to continue working while these women were turned out the door . O’Reilly left Fox less than three weeks later.

Six months later, in October, news broke about Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of women who were unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Other high-profile stories followed: of Matt Lauer, Les Moonves, and several other powerful and famous men who were quickly kicked out the door after allegations of toxic behavior surfaced. It seemed like Hollywood and the media were finally having their day of reckoning surrounding the widespread mistreatment of women in these industries.

And yet.

Some of the men whose downfalls were celebrated during the height of the #MeToo movement were welcomed with open arms.

Take O’Reilly, whose behavior at Fox forced the network to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle with women who alleged he engaged in widespread sexual misconduct. One of those women, a former producer named Andrea Mackris, left Fox News with a settlement and an NDA in 2004. Nearly 20 years later, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, she gave a harrowing interview to Daily Beast, detailing his alleged abuse; the settlement negotiations that forced her to sign a confidentiality agreement; and even mistreatment by male journalists, who persecuted her for daring to speak out.

Earlier this year, Mackris was forced to pay O’Reilly nearly $100,000 in fees for arbitration proceedings he instigated to enforce her 2004 NDA. She was silenced, once again, as she has been for 20 years, except for one brief moment, when he apparently assumed it was finally safe to share his own story.

Most, if not all, of the women O’Reilly allegedly harassed never worked in television news again.

Meanwhile, O’Reilly has become a regular presence again on TV – he even appeared back on Fox to promote one of his books just six months after his departure. Since then, O’Reilly has been routinely featured on every cable news network except MSNBC. Other than a recent interview with PBS’s Margaret Hoover—who, in a feat of journalistic excellence, repeatedly pressed O’Reilly about his treatment of women—no anchor at CNN, NewsNation or elsewhere has asked him directly about the tens of millions of dollars in payments to his alleged victims, or why he should be allowed to return.

O’Reilly’s recent resurrection in the media is just one of the countless turnarounds many male celebrities have had since being canceled at the height of the #MeToo movement.

As we approach what many consider to be the seven-year anniversary of the #MeToo movement, it is clear that we as a society still have work to do to ensure that survivors are protected and empowered to speak out against toxic behavior and seek justice, and that sexual predators receive much more than just a public slap on the wrist.

Through our nonprofit, Lift Our Voices, we have worked tirelessly to force a permanent reckoning for those who engage in workplace toxicity. Thanks to our two bipartisan laws, the Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Act and our Whistleblower Act, survivors of sexual misconduct are no longer automatically forced into the secret arbitration chamber or into silence. But, as we often say, changing the law – as difficult as it may be in these hyper-partisan times – is still easier than changing the culture.

With each passing week, the allegations against Combs continue to become more disturbing, including a recent report here at Deadline that his legal team is trying to intimidate his alleged sexual assault victims by forcing their names to be publicly released. . While these allegations, if proven at trial, would be as horrific and damning as anything Harvey Weinstein was convicted of, we must remain vigilant to ensure that the red carpet is not rolled out for abusers when the proverbial dust settles. in a few years.

To be clear, one of the reasons Combs was allegedly able to attack so many people is his widespread use of NDAs, which caused survivors to fear they would be sued into oblivion by a rich and powerful man if they spoke out. . .

This is what silencing mechanisms do: they seek to intimidate and isolate. One lawyer noted that the NDAs Combs routinely distributed may have been “the broadest non-disclosure agreement(s)” he had ever seen. But Combs’ NDAs were not particularly unusual in their breadth. Politicians on both sides of the aisle — from three-time Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy — have used similarly expansive NDAs to cover up toxic behavior. Organizations and individuals that are not as well known also use them to prevent exposure of inappropriate and illegal behavior.

Combs is not the only musician who has abused less powerful women, just as Weinstein is not the only producer who has attacked women in Hollywood and Ailes is not the only executive who has harassed women in the media. If we truly want to hold bad actors accountable, we need to stop making examples of a few high-profile abusers, while allowing so many others to rehabilitate themselves on national television, right before our eyes.