We all have an opinion about the #metoo movement. While some of us have lauded it, some of us have turned skeptical over it. And in this past year, I’ve seen how the Malayalam film industry just can’t stop making crude, unsavoury and tone-deaf jokes around it.
However that may be, this book by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the two New York Times reporters who broke the story on Harvey Weinstein, is a textbook study on investigative journalism. It’s about how to handle a sensitive story that can potentially explode in your face leaving you grasping at anything to prove your and your sources’ credibilities. It is about being sensitive to the survivors of sexual abuse while also still vetting and cross-checking each and every story that you stumble upon, down to every possible detail.
Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh are just the main perpetrators named in this book. And I’ve deliberately chosen to name them than the women who’ve come forward with their accounts of sexual abuse netted out to them because it’s high time we put the weight of such a scandal on the perpetrators than on the women who somehow scrap for courage to bring out their stories. This is also not to assume that men do not get abused or that women are not always truthful in using sexual abuse laws. This is simply to start listening to the women. This is to start trusting them so that the conversations do not stop because, at the end of the day, it is the fearless flow of dialogue that is important.
My interest in this book as a journalist and a feminist is quite evident. And so, I wish every single journalist who reports on sexual abuse must read this account because in reporting predatory behaviour the #metoo movement has been a milestone and this is the account that brought about the movement.
DeeTalkz 