Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It kind of feels stupid to argue with the remaining two Baldoni supporters at this point.

Baldoni's Instagram begs to differ.

There are at least 3 of us.

4

5

Oops. 6 !

7!

8

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It kind of feels stupid to argue with the remaining two Baldoni supporters at this point.

Baldoni's Instagram begs to differ.

There are at least 3 of us.

4

5

Oops. 6 !

7!

Y'all there is no way there is 7 people total on this thread, much less on one side. You're just sockpuppeting which is ridiculous.

I’m not sock puppeting. My number was legit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

So convenient we have had experts on sexual harassment, intimacy coordinators, and now fact checking, all on one dcum thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

What do you mean? The Musk piece had 4+ specific people on the record, not including the WSJ piece, his own public words about using ketamine in taped interviews, smoking pot on air, publicly saying he thinks the world needs more kids from smart people and making clear he wants to have many children etc.

The piece wasn’t based on the whisperings of a few people off the record about issues he’s never spoken about.

The opposite. And yet they gave him days to respond….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

Of course Twohey is not some rogue employee. I commented over a hundred pages ago it was laughable that naive people thought she would ever lose her gig for this. This is the Times’s business model. They are a rag with no ethics. Twohey will be a columnist soon or editor of the Atlantic. Reliable unethical foot soldiers always fail up.

[Anonymous]

everyone fixates on the emoji in the text exchange, when in blake's complaint and in the NYT video, there are text messages from jen abel saying something like, "the whispers, the sexual connotations, blah blah, gosh there is just soo much." when the NYT investigation first dropped, i interpreted that as jen abel saying she knew justin did a lot of horrible shit, and that he was lucky he got away with it.

twohey and blake did not include the texts from jen saying right after saying those things are not true. if twohey read through thousands of documents how did she miss that? i feel like that's where false light comes in, right? let's go full circle to why this whole thread was started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

in meghan twohey's video on the investigation, she says blake's complaint and NYT's own investigation reveal what really happened. the video is way sloppier than the article and i hope it comes to bite the NYT int he ass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

Interesting. I’ll assume you’re being honest and just never mentioned this background before. I’ve been fact checked before for stories by ‘the best fact checkers there are’ (guess?) and know fact checkers from other contexts so I have a sense of how they work. Some of what you say is indeed accurate IME, and that’s why I think this slipped through. Fair report, lively on the record, texts. It looks solid from one perspective.

But a good review by any serious news outlet would always require turning the coin over and considering other angles and contexts, especially in the context of SH SA (which is inherently personal and arguably objective in almost all cases), giving the other side time to explain or give context, etc., especially when the story is primarily coming from one person (is she trust worthy? Does she have an angle? Why is she coming to us? These are all basic questions that a junior fact checker would ask) and especially when there are multiple plaintiffs who are going to be extremely upset by their portrayal, and several of them are private people.

PP here and I don't know why you would expect me to identify my background in journalism in every post? Or what posts I've written.

Fact checking would not provide an assessment of how "trustworthy" Lively is in this situation because the article will be referring to her legal filing. She is a noteworthy person, as is the person she is accusing, and the accusations are being made publicly in a court of law. From a fact checkers perspective (and also the legal department), the focus would be on whether the reporting accurately represents what is alleged in the CRD. Whether Lively is telling the truth would appropriately be seen as a question for the court, but not a barrier to publication.

Fact checking does not require that reports get "both sides" of a story, and stories go out all the time with only one side. Editorial will generally push for additional perspectives because it makes the reporting stronger, and indeed here they did reach out to the defendants. The fact that they had a bunch of text messages from that side would have mitigated pressure to bring them in. A recent story like this would be when Pete Hegseth's nomination was pending, and his ex wife leaked a letter Hegseth's mom had sent him that was quite critical. When this was reported, they verified the letter was authentic, but they didn't give Hegseth or his mom a chance to refute it point by point. Later his mom did interviews and contextualized the letter differently. But that didn't make the letter unpublishable -- it was newsworthy and authenticated. First person original sources like that are given a lot of leeway. And in the case of Hegseth's mom, she was also a "private person." More so than Abel and Nathan who are prominent within their field and as mouthpieces for famous people.

There just isn't anything about the Lively pie e that raises eyebrows for me, like "oh they shouldn't have done that." It was solidly reported.

Sigh. No one said you’d have to ID yourself on every post but it’s an interesting career point to suddenly raise. Anyway, I recognize your arguments from pages ago when you said you handled breaking news. You weren’t a fact checker then, you claimed to be a writer. Ok.

Look, a fact checker and legal in a long form piece would absolutely try to get the other sides perspective to ensure they weren’t being defamatory and that they had the story right. Reporting on a legal filing (it must be a ‘fair report’ btw and there is case law on what that means’) does provide a *defense* to a claim, but you never want to get there in the first place, and as people have admitted on here this was a piece long in the works, the article claimed to be deeply reported beyond the CRD complaint and it was a hit piece on multiple people who didn’t have time to respond.

Look, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you but your Hegseth example shows me you’re likely full of it. You’re mixing up who the potential P is (it’s H, not his mom) and what info you have to worry about in a way that shows me you don’t actually know how to fact check or work with legal on stories. We also don’t really know if Hegseth was asked for comment. But again, you’re mixing up concepts, similar to how you’re discussing fair report. You’re on the right path but don’t quite know what you’re saying or how things work.

Fine.

Whatever post you are referring to was not mine -- I did not work in breaking news and never worked as a writer. I worked as a fact checker for a media conglomerate that supported several national publications.

And regarding the Hegseth letter, of course a potential plaintiff could be Hegseth OR his mom -- if the letter was not real, either could sue for defamation. But Hegseth cannot sue for defamation if an organization prints a real letter from his actual mom, and his mom can't sue if the letter is real. That's the point. The fact checkers on the story would be focused on verifying that the letter was real, that it was sent from the person they were saying it was sent from, that it was sent on the date and time they were alleging it was sent on. They would not need to verify if the the accusations in the letter were accurate because the fact being reported is simply that Hegseth's mother made the accusations. Not the accusations themselves.

I don't actually care if you think I'm "on the right path" or not. I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explain it for the people on this thread who clearly don't.

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

Interesting. I’ll assume you’re being honest and just never mentioned this background before. I’ve been fact checked before for stories by ‘the best fact checkers there are’ (guess?) and know fact checkers from other contexts so I have a sense of how they work. Some of what you say is indeed accurate IME, and that’s why I think this slipped through. Fair report, lively on the record, texts. It looks solid from one perspective.

But a good review by any serious news outlet would always require turning the coin over and considering other angles and contexts, especially in the context of SH SA (which is inherently personal and arguably objective in almost all cases), giving the other side time to explain or give context, etc., especially when the story is primarily coming from one person (is she trust worthy? Does she have an angle? Why is she coming to us? These are all basic questions that a junior fact checker would ask) and especially when there are multiple plaintiffs who are going to be extremely upset by their portrayal, and several of them are private people.

PP here and I don't know why you would expect me to identify my background in journalism in every post? Or what posts I've written.

Fact checking would not provide an assessment of how "trustworthy" Lively is in this situation because the article will be referring to her legal filing. She is a noteworthy person, as is the person she is accusing, and the accusations are being made publicly in a court of law. From a fact checkers perspective (and also the legal department), the focus would be on whether the reporting accurately represents what is alleged in the CRD. Whether Lively is telling the truth would appropriately be seen as a question for the court, but not a barrier to publication.

Fact checking does not require that reports get "both sides" of a story, and stories go out all the time with only one side. Editorial will generally push for additional perspectives because it makes the reporting stronger, and indeed here they did reach out to the defendants. The fact that they had a bunch of text messages from that side would have mitigated pressure to bring them in. A recent story like this would be when Pete Hegseth's nomination was pending, and his ex wife leaked a letter Hegseth's mom had sent him that was quite critical. When this was reported, they verified the letter was authentic, but they didn't give Hegseth or his mom a chance to refute it point by point. Later his mom did interviews and contextualized the letter differently. But that didn't make the letter unpublishable -- it was newsworthy and authenticated. First person original sources like that are given a lot of leeway. And in the case of Hegseth's mom, she was also a "private person." More so than Abel and Nathan who are prominent within their field and as mouthpieces for famous people.

There just isn't anything about the Lively pie e that raises eyebrows for me, like "oh they shouldn't have done that." It was solidly reported.

Sigh. No one said you’d have to ID yourself on every post but it’s an interesting career point to suddenly raise. Anyway, I recognize your arguments from pages ago when you said you handled breaking news. You weren’t a fact checker then, you claimed to be a writer. Ok.

Look, a fact checker and legal in a long form piece would absolutely try to get the other sides perspective to ensure they weren’t being defamatory and that they had the story right. Reporting on a legal filing (it must be a ‘fair report’ btw and there is case law on what that means’) does provide a *defense* to a claim, but you never want to get there in the first place, and as people have admitted on here this was a piece long in the works, the article claimed to be deeply reported beyond the CRD complaint and it was a hit piece on multiple people who didn’t have time to respond.

Look, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you but your Hegseth example shows me you’re likely full of it. You’re mixing up who the potential P is (it’s H, not his mom) and what info you have to worry about in a way that shows me you don’t actually know how to fact check or work with legal on stories. We also don’t really know if Hegseth was asked for comment. But again, you’re mixing up concepts, similar to how you’re discussing fair report. You’re on the right path but don’t quite know what you’re saying or how things work.

Fine.

Whatever post you are referring to was not mine -- I did not work in breaking news and never worked as a writer. I worked as a fact checker for a media conglomerate that supported several national publications.

And regarding the Hegseth letter, of course a potential plaintiff could be Hegseth OR his mom -- if the letter was not real, either could sue for defamation. But Hegseth cannot sue for defamation if an organization prints a real letter from his actual mom, and his mom can't sue if the letter is real. That's the point. The fact checkers on the story would be focused on verifying that the letter was real, that it was sent from the person they were saying it was sent from, that it was sent on the date and time they were alleging it was sent on. They would not need to verify if the the accusations in the letter were accurate because the fact being reported is simply that Hegseth's mother made the accusations. Not the accusations themselves.

I don't actually care if you think I'm "on the right path" or not. I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explain it for the people on this thread who clearly don't.

Sigh. Righto. Anyway no, your analysis is off, as is your claim that it’s not customary to go to ‘both sides’ in a story like this (before you talked about it in the context of breaking news, but now everyone has to concede it was being worked on for weeks or months).

The NYT and Twohey screwed up.

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

Interesting. I’ll assume you’re being honest and just never mentioned this background before. I’ve been fact checked before for stories by ‘the best fact checkers there are’ (guess?) and know fact checkers from other contexts so I have a sense of how they work. Some of what you say is indeed accurate IME, and that’s why I think this slipped through. Fair report, lively on the record, texts. It looks solid from one perspective.

But a good review by any serious news outlet would always require turning the coin over and considering other angles and contexts, especially in the context of SH SA (which is inherently personal and arguably objective in almost all cases), giving the other side time to explain or give context, etc., especially when the story is primarily coming from one person (is she trust worthy? Does she have an angle? Why is she coming to us? These are all basic questions that a junior fact checker would ask) and especially when there are multiple plaintiffs who are going to be extremely upset by their portrayal, and several of them are private people.

PP here and I don't know why you would expect me to identify my background in journalism in every post? Or what posts I've written.

Fact checking would not provide an assessment of how "trustworthy" Lively is in this situation because the article will be referring to her legal filing. She is a noteworthy person, as is the person she is accusing, and the accusations are being made publicly in a court of law. From a fact checkers perspective (and also the legal department), the focus would be on whether the reporting accurately represents what is alleged in the CRD. Whether Lively is telling the truth would appropriately be seen as a question for the court, but not a barrier to publication.

Fact checking does not require that reports get "both sides" of a story, and stories go out all the time with only one side. Editorial will generally push for additional perspectives because it makes the reporting stronger, and indeed here they did reach out to the defendants. The fact that they had a bunch of text messages from that side would have mitigated pressure to bring them in. A recent story like this would be when Pete Hegseth's nomination was pending, and his ex wife leaked a letter Hegseth's mom had sent him that was quite critical. When this was reported, they verified the letter was authentic, but they didn't give Hegseth or his mom a chance to refute it point by point. Later his mom did interviews and contextualized the letter differently. But that didn't make the letter unpublishable -- it was newsworthy and authenticated. First person original sources like that are given a lot of leeway. And in the case of Hegseth's mom, she was also a "private person." More so than Abel and Nathan who are prominent within their field and as mouthpieces for famous people.

There just isn't anything about the Lively pie e that raises eyebrows for me, like "oh they shouldn't have done that." It was solidly reported.

Sigh. No one said you’d have to ID yourself on every post but it’s an interesting career point to suddenly raise. Anyway, I recognize your arguments from pages ago when you said you handled breaking news. You weren’t a fact checker then, you claimed to be a writer. Ok.

Look, a fact checker and legal in a long form piece would absolutely try to get the other sides perspective to ensure they weren’t being defamatory and that they had the story right. Reporting on a legal filing (it must be a ‘fair report’ btw and there is case law on what that means’) does provide a *defense* to a claim, but you never want to get there in the first place, and as people have admitted on here this was a piece long in the works, the article claimed to be deeply reported beyond the CRD complaint and it was a hit piece on multiple people who didn’t have time to respond.

Look, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you but your Hegseth example shows me you’re likely full of it. You’re mixing up who the potential P is (it’s H, not his mom) and what info you have to worry about in a way that shows me you don’t actually know how to fact check or work with legal on stories. We also don’t really know if Hegseth was asked for comment. But again, you’re mixing up concepts, similar to how you’re discussing fair report. You’re on the right path but don’t quite know what you’re saying or how things work.

Fine.

Whatever post you are referring to was not mine -- I did not work in breaking news and never worked as a writer. I worked as a fact checker for a media conglomerate that supported several national publications.

And regarding the Hegseth letter, of course a potential plaintiff could be Hegseth OR his mom -- if the letter was not real, either could sue for defamation. But Hegseth cannot sue for defamation if an organization prints a real letter from his actual mom, and his mom can't sue if the letter is real. That's the point. The fact checkers on the story would be focused on verifying that the letter was real, that it was sent from the person they were saying it was sent from, that it was sent on the date and time they were alleging it was sent on. They would not need to verify if the the accusations in the letter were accurate because the fact being reported is simply that Hegseth's mother made the accusations. Not the accusations themselves.

I don't actually care if you think I'm "on the right path" or not. I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explain it for the people on this thread who clearly don't.

Sigh. Righto. Anyway no, your analysis is off, as is your claim that it’s not customary to go to ‘both sides’ in a story like this (before you talked about it in the context of breaking news, but now everyone has to concede it was being worked on for weeks or months).

The NYT and Twohey screwed up.

DP. How you defined "screwed up"? Legal liability, their overall reputational damage to the general public, or your personal opinion of them?

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

Interesting. I’ll assume you’re being honest and just never mentioned this background before. I’ve been fact checked before for stories by ‘the best fact checkers there are’ (guess?) and know fact checkers from other contexts so I have a sense of how they work. Some of what you say is indeed accurate IME, and that’s why I think this slipped through. Fair report, lively on the record, texts. It looks solid from one perspective.

But a good review by any serious news outlet would always require turning the coin over and considering other angles and contexts, especially in the context of SH SA (which is inherently personal and arguably objective in almost all cases), giving the other side time to explain or give context, etc., especially when the story is primarily coming from one person (is she trust worthy? Does she have an angle? Why is she coming to us? These are all basic questions that a junior fact checker would ask) and especially when there are multiple plaintiffs who are going to be extremely upset by their portrayal, and several of them are private people.

PP here and I don't know why you would expect me to identify my background in journalism in every post? Or what posts I've written.

Fact checking would not provide an assessment of how "trustworthy" Lively is in this situation because the article will be referring to her legal filing. She is a noteworthy person, as is the person she is accusing, and the accusations are being made publicly in a court of law. From a fact checkers perspective (and also the legal department), the focus would be on whether the reporting accurately represents what is alleged in the CRD. Whether Lively is telling the truth would appropriately be seen as a question for the court, but not a barrier to publication.

Fact checking does not require that reports get "both sides" of a story, and stories go out all the time with only one side. Editorial will generally push for additional perspectives because it makes the reporting stronger, and indeed here they did reach out to the defendants. The fact that they had a bunch of text messages from that side would have mitigated pressure to bring them in. A recent story like this would be when Pete Hegseth's nomination was pending, and his ex wife leaked a letter Hegseth's mom had sent him that was quite critical. When this was reported, they verified the letter was authentic, but they didn't give Hegseth or his mom a chance to refute it point by point. Later his mom did interviews and contextualized the letter differently. But that didn't make the letter unpublishable -- it was newsworthy and authenticated. First person original sources like that are given a lot of leeway. And in the case of Hegseth's mom, she was also a "private person." More so than Abel and Nathan who are prominent within their field and as mouthpieces for famous people.

There just isn't anything about the Lively pie e that raises eyebrows for me, like "oh they shouldn't have done that." It was solidly reported.

Sigh. No one said you’d have to ID yourself on every post but it’s an interesting career point to suddenly raise. Anyway, I recognize your arguments from pages ago when you said you handled breaking news. You weren’t a fact checker then, you claimed to be a writer. Ok.

Look, a fact checker and legal in a long form piece would absolutely try to get the other sides perspective to ensure they weren’t being defamatory and that they had the story right. Reporting on a legal filing (it must be a ‘fair report’ btw and there is case law on what that means’) does provide a *defense* to a claim, but you never want to get there in the first place, and as people have admitted on here this was a piece long in the works, the article claimed to be deeply reported beyond the CRD complaint and it was a hit piece on multiple people who didn’t have time to respond.

Look, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you but your Hegseth example shows me you’re likely full of it. You’re mixing up who the potential P is (it’s H, not his mom) and what info you have to worry about in a way that shows me you don’t actually know how to fact check or work with legal on stories. We also don’t really know if Hegseth was asked for comment. But again, you’re mixing up concepts, similar to how you’re discussing fair report. You’re on the right path but don’t quite know what you’re saying or how things work.

Fine.

Whatever post you are referring to was not mine -- I did not work in breaking news and never worked as a writer. I worked as a fact checker for a media conglomerate that supported several national publications.

And regarding the Hegseth letter, of course a potential plaintiff could be Hegseth OR his mom -- if the letter was not real, either could sue for defamation. But Hegseth cannot sue for defamation if an organization prints a real letter from his actual mom, and his mom can't sue if the letter is real. That's the point. The fact checkers on the story would be focused on verifying that the letter was real, that it was sent from the person they were saying it was sent from, that it was sent on the date and time they were alleging it was sent on. They would not need to verify if the the accusations in the letter were accurate because the fact being reported is simply that Hegseth's mother made the accusations. Not the accusations themselves.

I don't actually care if you think I'm "on the right path" or not. I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explain it for the people on this thread who clearly don't.

Sigh. Righto. Anyway no, your analysis is off, as is your claim that it’s not customary to go to ‘both sides’ in a story like this (before you talked about it in the context of breaking news, but now everyone has to concede it was being worked on for weeks or months).

The NYT and Twohey screwed up.

Curious what your background is that you feel confident that you know more than someone who has fact checked these kinds of stories before. The PP is providing useful examples and info but you're just contradicting without backing it up. So go ahead: describe how you have seen this process work in a newsroom and how the PP's account is incorrect.

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Anonymous wrote:Regarding the NYT piece on Lively, Twohey sent out requests for comments the evening before publication with plans to publish the following afternoon. I can't remember if it was 24 hours notice or more like 18.

Abel responded with a statement from Freedman, saying it covered all the Wayfarer defendants.

Twohey wrote back to clarify "including Jed Wallace." Abel confirmed yes, including Jed Wallace.

Then in the early morning the next day, Freedman leaked the CRD and the story itself to TMZ and a host of other tabloids, with a *different* statement than the one he'd provided the NYT, and the internet went wild on it.

At no point did Freedman or any of the Wayfarer parties request more time to respond to the NYT.

So yes, the NYT had no choice but to publish early before the news cycle completed. Freedman manufactured that situation by leaking and providing a comment to the tabloids. And then he turned around and argued the NYT offered Wayfarer inadequate time to respond.

Sorry, but no. It's a transparent game. Wayfarer not only had enough time to review the allegations (which they already knew about and were expecting) and provide a comment, but also had enough time for Freedman to orchestrate an attempted PR end run around the NYT piece before it published.

I am very over people complaining the NYT didn't give Wayfarer enough time to respond. Yes they did.

That’s all fairly inaccurate but to address two points, they gave the Wayfarer side approx 12 hours on a Friday night to respond, and then published earlier. That is not adequate or standard time for a long form piece that would be so devastating to multiple people, including private figures, and so largely based on one side’s view of a situation. And two, they did not need to rush the piece. That was a colossal mistake if that’s what they did. This wasn’t a big enough piece for the NYT to rush.

No, you are incorrect.

Here are Twohey's communications with Jen Abel: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304/gov.uscourts.nysd.634304.107.7.pdf

Twohey emailed Abel and other Wayfarer defendants at 6:46pm Eastern on December 20th. Her email did not include an expected time of publication, just a request for comment.

Abel replied at 8:16pm (there is a time change between Abel and Twohey so this shows up as 11:16pm on Abel's message). Abel's message provides a statement from Bryan Freedman for "Baldoni, Wayfarere, and all its representatives.

At 8:52pm, Twohey responds asking for clarification on who the statement applies to, specifically asking if it apples to Jen Abel and Melissa Nathan (Twhohey cc's both Freedman and Nathan on this message).

At 8:54pm, Abel replies that yes, it applies to all of those people plus Jed Wallace.

The next day, December 21st, at 4:54am (less than 10 hours after Twohey requested comment from the Wayfarer parties), TMZ published this article: https://www.tmz.com/2024/12/21/blake-lively-sues-justin-baldoni-sexual-harassment-retaliation-on-it-ends-with-us-set/

The article contained several statements from Bryan Freedman that are *different* from the statement Freedman provided the NYT. Thus Freedman communicated with TMZ about the story prior to publication. The original TMZ story had no comment from Lively's team (it would be updated much later in the day with a brief statement from Lively).

The TMZ article was then picked up by a variety of tabloids across the internet. All of these articles cite back to the TMZ article.

The NYT published their article at 10:11am on December 21st, 15+ hours after the request for comment was sent out, 12+ hours after Abel provided comment, and 5+ hours after the TMZ article was published with Freedman's alternative comments.

Explain to me, again, how Wayfarer was blindsided and didn't have enough time to respond.

lmao. Your own neurotic autopsy inadvertently admits this entire hit piece was already locked and loaded and ready to publish. A months in the making scheme ready for print… P.S. you have until tomorrow morning until we publish and permanently destroy your life.

DP. Exactly exactly exactly. look, this is just not the way long form pieces like this typically play out at places like the NYT. Internal lawyers and editors would almost always be advising the writer for WEEKS to get the other sides perspective, and not just giving them a few hours to respond. They would be sent a list of questions farther in advance, and a good reporter would work with fact checkers and legal to review the responses carefully and dig deeper to see if there was another side. This is standard practice, it just is.

12/15 hours is not enough time. It does not matter if freedman went to TMZ. NYT should not be rushing a story that is not properly investigated based on TMZ!!! Nuts.

You are wrong about how this works. The article was based on the CRD which wasn't filed until they published. Even if they were aware of what *might* be alleged in the legal filing, they can't go to the other side until they know for sure. They also no doubt had to authenticate the texts (they may have worked with Jones on background to do so). You would want to do all that before you went to Baldoni/Wayfarer because you don't want to be asking them about things that didn't wind up in the complaint or, god forbid, find out the texts or other docs were faked. They had to nail it down before getting the other perspective because that's how you build a story.

No editor is going to suggest a reporter go get the "other side" before nailing down the actual allegations first. Otherwise what do you ask? Twohey did this by the book. And there was nothing stopping Freedman from offering a much more extensive statement, getting on the phone with her, etc. Nothing. Twohey would have loved that. It would have made her article better. But it wasn't an option available to her. They started going to other outlets to talk. They just didn't want to talk to Twohey.

Dp. Genuinely curious about this. What ‘book’ did Twohey do this by? Do you mean NYT editorial, fact checking and legal standards? So let’s see them if you know so much. What do they say?

So you don't think she abided by their general standards and practices?

I think Twohey is an unethical fame whoring hack who seeks to rub shoulders with Hollywood. She is not some humble low key investigative reporter who shuns the spotlight. And if you don’t think these two plantation dunces are above offering or implying there was something in this for her I have a bridge to sell you. Hopefully she’s deposed and her communication records are preserved.

It doesn't matter what Twohey personally wanted. I doubt the paper would publish without the usual legal review for a story of this nature. And her story likely passed muster because it was all sourced in the documents, whether you believe what the underlying documents say or not. Every indication is that Twohey and the NYT stand behind the story. The one argument against that proferred by Baldoni supporters was that she hadn't published anything in a while, but now they've printed another article from her about a much more important than Baldoni with much less sourcing, so they apparently find her reliable. Again, you can disagree.

The stature of a writer can definitely influence internal decisions, even subconsciously.

It wasn’t sourced well, as you claim. It was mostly relying on a fair report privilege (that’s why they waited to publish even though they’d been working on it for awhile) from one woman’s perspective (who had a bias, that they didn’t bother to find) and texts that were arguably taken out of context, but in any event, all from one side. That’s not well sourced. It’s the opposite.

And as far as today’s piece, I’m sure it was in the works for awhile, in fact it was much MUCH better sourced than the Blake article- there were multiple people from different parts of Musks life who gave statements- and other outlets had previously covered the same info in some form (the WSJ as ex). Musk is obviously a public figure too, and has openly admitted to drug use and wanting to populate the world with his offspring.

But even with all of that, the NYT still gave musk DAYS to respond.

I think it's very hard to argue that an anonymous information, or even multiple anonymous informants, is a better source than someone's own words in an authenticated text exchange.

And yes, of course the existence of actual litigation and Lively's willingness to go on the record with regards to her allegations makes it easier for the NYT because they can simply say "here is what Lively alleges" and that does in fact protect them if anything she says turns out not to be true because her willingness to allege it in court proceedings protects them.

Which is why it was not necessary to give Baldoni multiple days to respond as they gave Musk. Anonymous sourcing is always dicier and journalists are always pushed to corroborate any anonymous or background source, and it's much riskier to go to print with an anonymously sourced article so of course they are going to give the subject more time to respond. From a legal perspective that will be necessary.

But there were ZERO anonymous sources on the Lively/Baldoni piece. They had Lively on the record an in her court filing, and they had authenticated text messages from the subjects themselves, in their own words. Nothing based on leaks or unsourced allegations, nothing based on rumor or innuendo. All very straightforward.

They are incredibly different articles from both a reporting and a legal standpoint. I see nothing strange or unethical about the approach on either article. Of course impossible to know what conversations were had behind the scenes. Also impossible to know what they held back in either story -- I guarantee both articles had details that were cut because they could not be sufficiently supported via sourcing. But having read both articles and being familiar with the sourcing on both, there's nothing out of sorts here.

- former fact-checker for multiple national publications

Interesting. I’ll assume you’re being honest and just never mentioned this background before. I’ve been fact checked before for stories by ‘the best fact checkers there are’ (guess?) and know fact checkers from other contexts so I have a sense of how they work. Some of what you say is indeed accurate IME, and that’s why I think this slipped through. Fair report, lively on the record, texts. It looks solid from one perspective.

But a good review by any serious news outlet would always require turning the coin over and considering other angles and contexts, especially in the context of SH SA (which is inherently personal and arguably objective in almost all cases), giving the other side time to explain or give context, etc., especially when the story is primarily coming from one person (is she trust worthy? Does she have an angle? Why is she coming to us? These are all basic questions that a junior fact checker would ask) and especially when there are multiple plaintiffs who are going to be extremely upset by their portrayal, and several of them are private people.

PP here and I don't know why you would expect me to identify my background in journalism in every post? Or what posts I've written.

Fact checking would not provide an assessment of how "trustworthy" Lively is in this situation because the article will be referring to her legal filing. She is a noteworthy person, as is the person she is accusing, and the accusations are being made publicly in a court of law. From a fact checkers perspective (and also the legal department), the focus would be on whether the reporting accurately represents what is alleged in the CRD. Whether Lively is telling the truth would appropriately be seen as a question for the court, but not a barrier to publication.

Fact checking does not require that reports get "both sides" of a story, and stories go out all the time with only one side. Editorial will generally push for additional perspectives because it makes the reporting stronger, and indeed here they did reach out to the defendants. The fact that they had a bunch of text messages from that side would have mitigated pressure to bring them in. A recent story like this would be when Pete Hegseth's nomination was pending, and his ex wife leaked a letter Hegseth's mom had sent him that was quite critical. When this was reported, they verified the letter was authentic, but they didn't give Hegseth or his mom a chance to refute it point by point. Later his mom did interviews and contextualized the letter differently. But that didn't make the letter unpublishable -- it was newsworthy and authenticated. First person original sources like that are given a lot of leeway. And in the case of Hegseth's mom, she was also a "private person." More so than Abel and Nathan who are prominent within their field and as mouthpieces for famous people.

There just isn't anything about the Lively pie e that raises eyebrows for me, like "oh they shouldn't have done that." It was solidly reported.

Sigh. No one said you’d have to ID yourself on every post but it’s an interesting career point to suddenly raise. Anyway, I recognize your arguments from pages ago when you said you handled breaking news. You weren’t a fact checker then, you claimed to be a writer. Ok.

Look, a fact checker and legal in a long form piece would absolutely try to get the other sides perspective to ensure they weren’t being defamatory and that they had the story right. Reporting on a legal filing (it must be a ‘fair report’ btw and there is case law on what that means’) does provide a *defense* to a claim, but you never want to get there in the first place, and as people have admitted on here this was a piece long in the works, the article claimed to be deeply reported beyond the CRD complaint and it was a hit piece on multiple people who didn’t have time to respond.

Look, I’m not going to get into a tit for tat with you but your Hegseth example shows me you’re likely full of it. You’re mixing up who the potential P is (it’s H, not his mom) and what info you have to worry about in a way that shows me you don’t actually know how to fact check or work with legal on stories. We also don’t really know if Hegseth was asked for comment. But again, you’re mixing up concepts, similar to how you’re discussing fair report. You’re on the right path but don’t quite know what you’re saying or how things work.

Fine.

Whatever post you are referring to was not mine -- I did not work in breaking news and never worked as a writer. I worked as a fact checker for a media conglomerate that supported several national publications.

And regarding the Hegseth letter, of course a potential plaintiff could be Hegseth OR his mom -- if the letter was not real, either could sue for defamation. But Hegseth cannot sue for defamation if an organization prints a real letter from his actual mom, and his mom can't sue if the letter is real. That's the point. The fact checkers on the story would be focused on verifying that the letter was real, that it was sent from the person they were saying it was sent from, that it was sent on the date and time they were alleging it was sent on. They would not need to verify if the the accusations in the letter were accurate because the fact being reported is simply that Hegseth's mother made the accusations. Not the accusations themselves.

I don't actually care if you think I'm "on the right path" or not. I know what I'm talking about. I'm trying to explain it for the people on this thread who clearly don't.

I'm sorry you're getting this treatment from team Baldoni but I'm not surprised. They cannot accept reality. In particular there is one lawyer who has some tiny amount of experience with first amendment law (who will tell you this in every post) who will argue her face off despite having the facts wrong, and when she has the facts right she will have the law wrong. None of them will ever say that we are right about a single thing. Confronted with cold hard facts that show we are right, they will dance around and repeat their wrong facts, or change the subject.

They have been wrong about so much, but act like they are always right.

Perhaps the last straw for me was yesterday when against all odds the "They are tracking my IP address" lady actually returned to the thread and repeated and doubled down on her claims that a Lively defender was tracking her location. I could not believe it! But afterwards, every single one of them claimed it was just some ruse and told me to be quiet. I had been right about that lady existing, and the crazy claims, all along.

It has been the same with them at ever turn. A small victory for Lively is actually nothing. Good facts to come out for her actually mean nothing. Their arguments ultimately mean nothing because nothing is ever gained with them, only lost. I'm not even including the people who just write gossip. Their whole side is just a black hole of meaningless churn.