The most recent wave of reporting on sexual abuse and sexual harassment began with the report on Harvey Weinstein’s decades of abuse in Hollywood, but other accusations of sexual assault and harassment by prominent figures continue to dominate the headlines. As more survivors of sexual assault and harassment come forward, journalists face a dual challenge.
First, they need to corroborate and fact check their stories as they would any other story, a necessity driven home recently by the Washington Post’s report of an attempt to deceive the paper into reporting a false accusation against Roy Moore, a nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat. Continue reading