How sexual harassment at Vice media was exposed
In 1994, a small magazine was founded in Montreal, Canada, with the help of government funding. Called Voice of Montreal back then, this magazine soon saw relocation to New York (with a new name), where it became a household name as a “punk” periodical that featured stories about culture, often written in Gonzo style. The subjects in this magazine have been deemed inappropriate, ostentatious and edgy. David Carr, New York Times’ media critic, famously once described its journalism as: “putting on a f**king safari helmet and looking at some poop”. The Columbia Journalism Review once described this organisation as a cult. Today, more than 23 years later, this magazine has turned into a media giant — that now includes multiple websites, a television network, a film-production company as well as a daily news show and documentary programme — valued at approximately $5.7 billion. This company is called Vice. For all its popularity, Vice Media’s journalism has often been called problematic; but right now it is not the company’s actions on paper and video, rather its inner functioning is being questioned.
On December 24, 2017, on Christmas Eve, Emily Steel of New York Times published a report on the media organisation, and how this new-age, in-your-face, millennial friendly media organisation is a cesspool of toxic male behaviour and sexual harassment. The NYT investigative report found the company involved in at least four settlements involving allegations of sexual harassment or defamation against Vice employees, including its current president, apart from the accounts of more than two dozen other women who said they had experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct at the company in the form of unwanted kisses, groping, lewd remarks and propositions for sex.
A woman who works at Vice, reported Steel, claimed that a co-worker suddenly took her hand and put it on his crotch. Another claimed that she felt pressured into a sexual relationship with an executive and was fired after she rejected him. Yet another said that a co-worker grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and she used her umbrella to fend him off.
As per the report, Vice’s president Andrew Creighton was part of a settlement in 2016, when Creighton paid $135,000 to a former employee who claimed that she was fired after she rejected an intimate relationship with him. In addition, in 2017, Vice settled for an unknown amount with Martina Veltroni, a former employee who claimed that her supervisor retaliated against her after they had a sexual relationship, among other allegations. The supervisor, Jason Mojica, the former head of Vice News, was fired in November.
In January 2016, Vice reached a $24,000 settlement with Joanna Fuertes-Knight, a former journalist in its London office, who said she had been the victim of sexual harassment, racial and gender discrimination and bullying. Fuertes-Knight claimed that Vice producer Rhys James had made racist and sexist statements to her, including asking about the colour of her nipples and whether she slept with black men. This is, perhaps, the tip of the iceberg. The stories keep on coming.
As a year, 2017, witnessed revolution. Post the ousting of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual harasser, powerful men from all parts of the world have realised that their actions — taking advantage of their position in the workplace and in society to sexually harass, rape and assault women — can no longer be kept under wraps. From multiple powerful men in Hollywood (like Louis CK, Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Spacey) to men in Indian academia, no one is immune now that the silence has been broken by women across the world. That Vice Media too has men in its organisation who abuse their powers and positions is unsurprising. What is surprising is how the company has let a toxic culture fester for years. “The misogyny might look different than you would have expected it to in the 1950s, but it was still there, it was still ingrained. This is a wake-up call,” said Kayla Ruble, a journalist who worked at Vice from 2014 to 2016.
Addressing the NYT report, Vice co-founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi released a statement acknowledging that the company had taken action over “multiple instances of unacceptable behaviour”.
“Cultural elements from our past, dysfunction and mismanagement were allowed to flourish unchecked. That includes a detrimental ‘boys’ club’ culture that fostered inappropriate behaviour that permeated throughout the company… From the top down, we have failed as a company to create a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone, especially women, can feel respected and thrive.”
What exactly are these mismanagements and dysfunctions that Smith and Alvi refer to? Steel, in her report, describes the media organisation’s environment as “cowboy culture”. Vice employees, it seems, live in a perpetual state of decadence and excesses. “There is a toxic environment where men can say the most disgusting things, joke about sex openly, and overall a toxic environment where women are treated far inferior than men,” said Sandra Miller, who worked as head of branded production at Vice from 2014 to 2016. But it wasn’t just the parties and the toxic masculinity in the organisation, but the organisation’s policies itself that have fertilised this culture.
Steel reported that Vice employees were required to sign a confidentiality agreement when they joined, which stated that during and after their employment they would not publicly disparage the company. The report adds that until recently, Vice also required employees to sign a “non-traditional” workplace agreement acknowledging that they would be exposed to explicit, potentially disturbing material but that they did not find such content or “the workplace environment” to be offensive or disturbing.
While Vice claims that this agreement was meant only for content, and not conduct at the workplace, a lot of employees have stated that they took the agreement to mean they could not complain about issues of harassment. Upon learning that the language was causing confusion, Vice eliminated the agreement. Post the publication of the NYT report, Vice has outlined measures to change its workplace culture, including the hiring of a new HR director, a commitment to gender pay equity by 2019 and the establishment of an advisory board including renowned feminist Gloria Steinem.
Vice, it would seem, has a lot of virtues to learn.