Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not saying this is true, but it makes a lot of sense:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FogudV/


And if it is true, The NY Times was played.

You know what doesn't make a lot of sense? That lady's eyebrows. Or the concept of a person whose career is to "create content" on TikTok that amounts to mindless speculation based on... random Facebook posts she read?

But sure, yes, the NYT "got played." Let's go with that.

The NY Times definitely got played, that’s not really up for debate. But that’s the danger of basing an article on one sources who turns out to be not truthful. Oh well.

It's really up for debate. That's the purpose of this thread. Not just to rag on Lively lol. Lots of debate in this thread defending the NYT article as based on factual texts that they cited and printed. Even if they focused on the texts/comms that supported Lively, you can't say those aren't truthful. They're there in black and white, sorry ma'am.

Actually in the podcast, they acknowledge Justin’s claim that surrounding texts which were not included could give the published texts a different meaning.

Did they say why they didn’t include them?

And should they even be admitting to that?? That's basically Justin lawsuit. That they had all the text messages but purposefully excluded context to defame him. Let's say that's not enough for defamation. That admission is enough to wreck their reputations and that's simply will not go away.

It’s likely negligence - good enough to meet the defamation standard for the private PR people - and arguably reckless disregard for the truth- the defamation standard for public figures. I’m just baffled by the NYT here, truly…

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Have Blake and Ryan yet fired the lawyers, MBAs, and PR airheads who war-gamed this scheme which is backfiring into their faces and destroying their careers?

Two ego maniac dummies talked into this by educated seasoned professionals.

I safely assume they wish this would all just go away at this point. What a massive unforced error. Oops!

This comment and the one before it are just gross — someone posting their 🤮

This sort of thing is what sounds like PR people posting to infect popular opinion, and that’s why I object to it. Also it’s stuff like this that got prior threads closed.

Someone who was posting stuff like this said why not, in light of the Bezos girlfriend threads. I don’t read those, but if I did I’d object to that too. Post your 🤮 🤮 🤮 somewhere else. It doesn’t belong here. Last time you insisted on it the thread closed, so if this thread is so important to you, DO BETTER.

DP

My opinion of BL is based on her interviews. I hadn’t given this much thought about any of this until the NYT article. Now I think she’s a jerk who lies. You can’t blame that on Baldoni.

One theme I have seen with her in a few of those interviews that is interesting in light of this lawsuit, is that several times she is asked a fairly innocuous question by an interviewer and she has the most twisted interpretation of the intent that was meant. Like, almost out of touch with reality reaction to the person sitting there as if she has no idea how people generally communicate. She brings the tone from like a 5 to a 100 and goes after the person FAST, but not in a particularly sharp way. But it's like it is her default to jump to being seriously offended.

(Meaning to say, I don't even know that she per se, but her version of the truth and interpretation of others' communication does seem to be frequently pretty warped...)

* that she lies

She sure does. She should have walked away from this mess after Baldoni filed. I am somewhat convinced by the argument that Reynolds won’t let her back away. They’re insane for this.

I think it's perfectly fair to argue that she should not have escalated the conflict at various points. Like I think depending on what it was really like on set (and no way for me to know), maybe she should have tried harder to just promote the movie normally with Baldoni or not unfollowed him on social media. Maybe she could have worked things out via lawyers after she found out about the PR campaign and gotten a quiet settlement on that instead of filing a lawsuit and going to the NYT. I think it's fair to second guess those choices, though hard to know what I would have done in that situation because I don't have all the facts and maybe never will.

But it's insane to argue that Lively should have "walked away" after Baldoni filed his complaint. Baldoni's complaint and the behavior of his lawyer has been go-for-broke. At that point, she has no choice but to fight back. I'm sure much the way Baldoni felt after the NYT's piece and Lively's complaint came out. One someone shoots across the bow like that, you're in it whether you want to be or not.

Her best chance to bow out was before he filed her complaint. Once it was clear that he was going to do so and had recorded pretty much everything, she should have done exactly that.

Only they know the truth. Nothing Baldoni has released so far is particularly damning for her case. He has no response at all to many of her allegations, like whether they pressured her to do nudity in the birthing scene or if he repeatedly told her he was communing with her dead father even after she asked him not to. Some of his defenses don't actually vindicate him.

He has not come out with anything that I would say is going to torpedo her legal case. The bigger risk is that he just attacks her in the press long enough that it destroys her reputation. But... that's what was already happening, right? That's what made her sue him in the first place.

So she really doesn't have anything to lose by continuing. She might win her case, and the only way for her to keep fighting back on him trying to trash her in the press is to have the lawsuit.

You do understand that communing with her dead father is not sexual harassment, right?

I also think, regarding some of the SH allegations that he hasn’t defended, it’s his word against hers. He’s only released texts/video, not he said/she said stuff.

I can almost guarantee he did bring up his porn addiction, as I think that’s something he talks about a lot as forming his current feminist personality (genuine or not)—but I’m more skeptical of how she framed the other claims (in the worst possible light versus what was perhaps intended, sorts like the “it so smells good” thing). But I think maybe there are witnesses for those who can be deposed.

But I think they did both cross boundaries, though, and for that he will probably pay. If he is a feminist, as he claims, hopefully he learns some lessons about promoting a professional workplace. It’s not group therapy; it’s a work place.

Many of the incidents Lively alleges include reference to other people being present. Her assistant was supposedly present in the car when he told her about having had sex with women without consent in the past. Her nanny and multiple makeup artists were supposedly present in the incident where Heath allegedly came into the makeup trailer while she was topless against her objections. Presumably these people would all be deposed. You an argue that the people in Lively's employ have reason to back up her version of events, but people like the makeup artists or other crew members were actually employed by Wayfarer.

I also think the other actors on the set will be deposed, in particular to describe how Baldoni and Wayfarer handled nudity and intimacy on the set, and to attest to Baldoni's demeanor. And based on the fact that not only has the rest of the cast backed Blake, but the actors guild has backed her, I think this could be damning. I think even Baldoni knows he crossed lines on the set -- in those texts with his PR people, he wanted to do an interview to talk about his neurodivergence as a way to explain some of the stuff he said to or about Lively on the set (they correctly dissuaded him from doing this). He basically wanted a way to explain or scapegoat some of his behavior. That means he knows some of his behavior was problematic. To me this is a red flag for his case, and I think one reason his attorney's approach has been to go so hard and flood the zone now. It might also explain why they released that 2am voice memo, which I don't think made him look good. I think if it gets to the point where we are actually delving into what happened on the set and what the experience was like, not just for Lively, but for other cast and crew, he knows he's going to have to explain a lot of behavior that will sound quite bad when you have Brendan Sklenar and Jenny Slate and the makeup people and actor's assistants and craft services all agreeing that his behavior was a problem. If that's the case (and I think it's likely it is), this really undermines their argument that Lively is oversensitive or trumping up these concerns, and he'll need another argument (like that he's neurodivergent and can't be held responsible for the behavior).

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The NYT podcast is very telling.

However, I don’t think he ever thought he’d win it, but wanted discovery.

The billionaire is also Bahai and his wife is involved with Wayfair, so $ spigot is not going to be turned off soon.

Totally disagree, I just listened to it and would like that half hour back. Listen if you want to hear Twohey regurgitate her article while her co worker barely reacts. She doesn’t say one word about how Blake’s complaint came to her attention (CA complaint was not public) nor does she say anything about how she investigated the story. It’s a complete joke, about what you would expect from a newspaper interviewing their own reporter about an article they are being sued for.

I read the transcript in 5 minutes. It’s a good summary for anyone who’s not dialed in.

Do you have a link to it? I can’t find it on the NYT app

Babe, are you trolling with all these questions about where basic things are? I was able to pull up the episode with the transcript after a quick google search.

Huh? What other questions?

DP but there have been multiple questions about this podcast that are like "please summarize it for me here" or "can you link I can't possibly find it." It's weird.

Especially in light of the fact it’s a complete nothing burger, I’d be interested in Twomey being interviewed by another outlet, instead of a NY Times recitation of her article.

NP. I just listened to it. Pretty astounding that the NYT gave all of them just 14 hours to respond. You can argue Baldoni would have a lawyer on call, but the PR people? So weird that they felt the need to rush this story. There was nothing urgent about it that I can see.

That doesn't strike me as "astounding." It sounds pretty typical. If a newspaper does a deeply researched piece on your wrongdoing which includes actual text messages they have verified as true, they aren't going to give you days to get ahead of that narrative and undermine their reporting. They are going to give you enough time to respond and then publish.

But in any case, Baldoni actually responded with a statement within just a couple hours, so it turns out that 14 hours was more than enough.

I don't think we know how much time they gave the PR people, actually. It's not like Baldoni lives with Melissa Nathan. Presumably they contacted people separately.

True, we don’t know if the PR people got extra time, but if they did, it seems odd it wasn’t mentioned. At all. In fact it’s not clear to me they got any direct heads up from this interview, just Baldoni, even though they are made to look pretty terrible.

I worked in journalism for awhile, and 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece that isn’t breaking news and which is so detailed and potentially devastating to various people’s reputations. Weinstein was given far more time, as one example.

And Baldonis lawyer statement is fine, but obviously a blanket statement like that isn’t all that compelling- which the NYT knows- and I’m sure Baldoni and the PR people would have preferred to have more time to provide detail of what parts of the piece were incorrect, and to provide their perspective, which is what a good journalist typically tries to do, especially for something so inherently he said/she said. It’s just strangely lazy reporting from the NYT, and it’s not like Hollywood gossip is their typical beat. Why the rush to go out with this story?

It's not weird they don't mention how much time the PR people got or anything about them because no one actually cares about them. Of course the story focuses on the main characters.

At some point there may be some look into their situation but that's not the main focus of the story. Like according to Lively's complaint, her assistant and others were present for many of the weird and discomforting things that happened with Baldoni and Heath. No one focuses on that though, they focus on Blake Lively because she's famous and they aren't. Same thing.

And you glossed over the main point. 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece like this. Not for a story like this.

Sure it is. the NYTimes doesn’t give people weeks to respond.

1. You do need to give people any time to respond. That has nothing to do with a defamation case.
2. 10-15 minutes can be fine to meet the norms.
3. 14 hours is a lot.

Former reporter PP who said 14 hours was fine here and thank you. It's very frustrating to see people on this thread asserting totally insane things about journalistic standards and to try and correct them only to be told "you don't know anything about journalism." Lol. I worked in war zones!

Dp. I’m someone who challenged you earlier and your experience makes sense, and why you don’t seem to be understanding why this was a journalistic failure. This is so different than war zone breaking news coverage. This was a long article - more like a feature- that would likely decimate multiple people’s careers- including several who are arguably private individuals- and the NYT basically ran it from the perspective of one person - a single source he said/she said story is just very risky. I’m sure they told themselves that they are safe bc it’s from her complaint - that provides protection as a ‘fair report’ of legal proceedings- but the fact is they clearly worked with BL and didn’t seem to seek any other perspective, and they seemed to rush to publish this even though it was hardly typical breaking news for the NYT. Single source stories are legally risky, why would they risk that over some B/C list celebrity squabble? I don’t get it.

I did not only work in war zones. I also did domestic reporting and in depth stories.

They didn't only have one source. They had Lively but they also had Stephanie Jones at Jonesworks (this is where all the texts came from). They may also have had others.

Also, while this was a feature article, the focus was actually not Lively's lawsuit. Obviously it's discussed and Lively is discussed -- this is the hook that makes the story more newsworthy because Lively is a recognizable figure and the story concerned a movie that had recently come out and done very well. But the story was really about the PR industry. The focus was on the retaliation claims because that's where NYT had concrete evidence to report on (the texts) as well as sources. The title of the story and the general thrust of the piece was on what the PR people did, linking this to another recent high profile case (Depp/Heard) where similar PR tactics were employed, and exposing this aspect of the PR industry.

People on here are fixated on Lively and Baldoni but if you go back and read the original reporting from NYT, it's not *really* about them. It's using their conflict to explore PR and Hollywood and this dark side that many readers likely were unaware of before reading the piece -- how PR might use questionable tactics like astroturfing and social media seeding to guide public opinion about celebrities, and even to torpedo careers. And for this aspect of the story, they DID have more than one source and also nothing about that aspect of the story has been disproven (in fact nothing about their reporting has been disproven at all).

[Anonymous]

Ugh they should settle but that would require on of them to blink, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon. What a mess

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh they should settle but that would require on of them to blink, and I don’t see it happening anytime soon. What a mess

Agree, they should settle. Baldoni isn’t blinking and Ryan and Blake have way more to lose.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not saying this is true, but it makes a lot of sense:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FogudV/


And if it is true, The NY Times was played.

You know what doesn't make a lot of sense? That lady's eyebrows. Or the concept of a person whose career is to "create content" on TikTok that amounts to mindless speculation based on... random Facebook posts she read?

But sure, yes, the NYT "got played." Let's go with that.

The NY Times definitely got played, that’s not really up for debate. But that’s the danger of basing an article on one sources who turns out to be not truthful. Oh well.

Agreed. There's really no excuse for how poorly NYT handled the situation. Megan Twohey lost major credibility with this. Not to mention she recently did a podcast where she just doubled down on the lies.

I’m one of the posters who has vigorously argued that the defamation case is weak. but yeah, I’m surprised the NYTimes has still not learned that reporting on one side of the he-said she-said story is likely to be incredibly poor journalism. if the claim is they are just reporting on the complaint as filed, what’s the point of that? Hardly suits the NYTimes reputation. I don’t think this story was or is worth NYTimes attention unless it can be framed more broadly to be about the evolution of Hollywood.

I don't understand why they didn't go down this route or focus more about the PR agents. That way they could expand on Leslie Stone and Stephanie Jones. There is an interesting story there but it's not between Blake and Justin.

They did! I just wrote about this. If you read the original NYT story it is mostly about the PR angle.

I do think it's weird they don't mention Stephanie Jones in the piece or explain the relationship between her and Nathan/Abel. This was the one aspect of the piece that I found sketchy because they were quite obviously relying on Jones to verify the texts. I have to assume that Jones agreed to work with them on this aspect of the story in exchange for not being dragged into it, which is why the story focuses exclusively on what Baldoni's team did with regards to Lively and does not get into Jones. Though I also don't know enough about the dispute between Jones and Nathan/Abel to know if that was relevant to the story. It may have really just been an employment dispute with no real relationship to the bigger story about PR firms doing this kind of character assassination and perhaps it was reasonable NYT didn't mention it. I'm on the fence about that.

But that's a journalistic ethics question and isn't really relevant to Baldoni's defamation case.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Have Blake and Ryan yet fired the lawyers, MBAs, and PR airheads who war-gamed this scheme which is backfiring into their faces and destroying their careers?

Two ego maniac dummies talked into this by educated seasoned professionals.

I safely assume they wish this would all just go away at this point. What a massive unforced error. Oops!

This comment and the one before it are just gross — someone posting their 🤮

This sort of thing is what sounds like PR people posting to infect popular opinion, and that’s why I object to it. Also it’s stuff like this that got prior threads closed.

Someone who was posting stuff like this said why not, in light of the Bezos girlfriend threads. I don’t read those, but if I did I’d object to that too. Post your 🤮 🤮 🤮 somewhere else. It doesn’t belong here. Last time you insisted on it the thread closed, so if this thread is so important to you, DO BETTER.

DP

My opinion of BL is based on her interviews. I hadn’t given this much thought about any of this until the NYT article. Now I think she’s a jerk who lies. You can’t blame that on Baldoni.

One theme I have seen with her in a few of those interviews that is interesting in light of this lawsuit, is that several times she is asked a fairly innocuous question by an interviewer and she has the most twisted interpretation of the intent that was meant. Like, almost out of touch with reality reaction to the person sitting there as if she has no idea how people generally communicate. She brings the tone from like a 5 to a 100 and goes after the person FAST, but not in a particularly sharp way. But it's like it is her default to jump to being seriously offended.

(Meaning to say, I don't even know that she per se, but her version of the truth and interpretation of others' communication does seem to be frequently pretty warped...)

* that she lies

She sure does. She should have walked away from this mess after Baldoni filed. I am somewhat convinced by the argument that Reynolds won’t let her back away. They’re insane for this.

I think it's perfectly fair to argue that she should not have escalated the conflict at various points. Like I think depending on what it was really like on set (and no way for me to know), maybe she should have tried harder to just promote the movie normally with Baldoni or not unfollowed him on social media. Maybe she could have worked things out via lawyers after she found out about the PR campaign and gotten a quiet settlement on that instead of filing a lawsuit and going to the NYT. I think it's fair to second guess those choices, though hard to know what I would have done in that situation because I don't have all the facts and maybe never will.

But it's insane to argue that Lively should have "walked away" after Baldoni filed his complaint. Baldoni's complaint and the behavior of his lawyer has been go-for-broke. At that point, she has no choice but to fight back. I'm sure much the way Baldoni felt after the NYT's piece and Lively's complaint came out. One someone shoots across the bow like that, you're in it whether you want to be or not.

Her best chance to bow out was before he filed her complaint. Once it was clear that he was going to do so and had recorded pretty much everything, she should have done exactly that.

Only they know the truth. Nothing Baldoni has released so far is particularly damning for her case. He has no response at all to many of her allegations, like whether they pressured her to do nudity in the birthing scene or if he repeatedly told her he was communing with her dead father even after she asked him not to. Some of his defenses don't actually vindicate him.

He has not come out with anything that I would say is going to torpedo her legal case. The bigger risk is that he just attacks her in the press long enough that it destroys her reputation. But... that's what was already happening, right? That's what made her sue him in the first place.

So she really doesn't have anything to lose by continuing. She might win her case, and the only way for her to keep fighting back on him trying to trash her in the press is to have the lawsuit.

You do understand that communing with her dead father is not sexual harassment, right?

I also think, regarding some of the SH allegations that he hasn’t defended, it’s his word against hers. He’s only released texts/video, not he said/she said stuff.

I can almost guarantee he did bring up his porn addiction, as I think that’s something he talks about a lot as forming his current feminist personality (genuine or not)—but I’m more skeptical of how she framed the other claims (in the worst possible light versus what was perhaps intended, sorts like the “it so smells good” thing). But I think maybe there are witnesses for those who can be deposed.

But I think they did both cross boundaries, though, and for that he will probably pay. If he is a feminist, as he claims, hopefully he learns some lessons about promoting a professional workplace. It’s not group therapy; it’s a work place.

Many of the incidents Lively alleges include reference to other people being present. Her assistant was supposedly present in the car when he told her about having had sex with women without consent in the past. Her nanny and multiple makeup artists were supposedly present in the incident where Heath allegedly came into the makeup trailer while she was topless against her objections. Presumably these people would all be deposed. You an argue that the people in Lively's employ have reason to back up her version of events, but people like the makeup artists or other crew members were actually employed by Wayfarer.

I also think the other actors on the set will be deposed, in particular to describe how Baldoni and Wayfarer handled nudity and intimacy on the set, and to attest to Baldoni's demeanor. And based on the fact that not only has the rest of the cast backed Blake, but the actors guild has backed her, I think this could be damning. I think even Baldoni knows he crossed lines on the set -- in those texts with his PR people, he wanted to do an interview to talk about his neurodivergence as a way to explain some of the stuff he said to or about Lively on the set (they correctly dissuaded him from doing this). He basically wanted a way to explain or scapegoat some of his behavior. That means he knows some of his behavior was problematic. To me this is a red flag for his case, and I think one reason his attorney's approach has been to go so hard and flood the zone now. It might also explain why they released that 2am voice memo, which I don't think made him look good. I think if it gets to the point where we are actually delving into what happened on the set and what the experience was like, not just for Lively, but for other cast and crew, he knows he's going to have to explain a lot of behavior that will sound quite bad when you have Brendan Sklenar and Jenny Slate and the makeup people and actor's assistants and craft services all agreeing that his behavior was a problem. If that's the case (and I think it's likely it is), this really undermines their argument that Lively is oversensitive or trumping up these concerns, and he'll need another argument (like that he's neurodivergent and can't be held responsible for the behavior).

There is no need for testimony when the incidents in dispute were filmed or otherwise recorded. I don’t know why people, perhaps you, that are allegations of sexual harassment that were not addressed by him. That’s untrue. He has explained that anything sexual in nature was discussed in the context of developing the intimacy scenes. Perhaps the intimaccoordinator may have some relevant testimony but others are unlikely to be present.


Furthermore, there is a difference between vague statements of supports and actual knowledge. When a woman brings allegations of sexual harassment, it is pretty much required that people credit them initially, particularly in more liberal parts of the country.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The NYT podcast is very telling.

However, I don’t think he ever thought he’d win it, but wanted discovery.

The billionaire is also Bahai and his wife is involved with Wayfair, so $ spigot is not going to be turned off soon.

Totally disagree, I just listened to it and would like that half hour back. Listen if you want to hear Twohey regurgitate her article while her co worker barely reacts. She doesn’t say one word about how Blake’s complaint came to her attention (CA complaint was not public) nor does she say anything about how she investigated the story. It’s a complete joke, about what you would expect from a newspaper interviewing their own reporter about an article they are being sued for.

I read the transcript in 5 minutes. It’s a good summary for anyone who’s not dialed in.

Do you have a link to it? I can’t find it on the NYT app

Babe, are you trolling with all these questions about where basic things are? I was able to pull up the episode with the transcript after a quick google search.

Huh? What other questions?

DP but there have been multiple questions about this podcast that are like "please summarize it for me here" or "can you link I can't possibly find it." It's weird.

Especially in light of the fact it’s a complete nothing burger, I’d be interested in Twomey being interviewed by another outlet, instead of a NY Times recitation of her article.

NP. I just listened to it. Pretty astounding that the NYT gave all of them just 14 hours to respond. You can argue Baldoni would have a lawyer on call, but the PR people? So weird that they felt the need to rush this story. There was nothing urgent about it that I can see.

That doesn't strike me as "astounding." It sounds pretty typical. If a newspaper does a deeply researched piece on your wrongdoing which includes actual text messages they have verified as true, they aren't going to give you days to get ahead of that narrative and undermine their reporting. They are going to give you enough time to respond and then publish.

But in any case, Baldoni actually responded with a statement within just a couple hours, so it turns out that 14 hours was more than enough.

I don't think we know how much time they gave the PR people, actually. It's not like Baldoni lives with Melissa Nathan. Presumably they contacted people separately.

True, we don’t know if the PR people got extra time, but if they did, it seems odd it wasn’t mentioned. At all. In fact it’s not clear to me they got any direct heads up from this interview, just Baldoni, even though they are made to look pretty terrible.

I worked in journalism for awhile, and 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece that isn’t breaking news and which is so detailed and potentially devastating to various people’s reputations. Weinstein was given far more time, as one example.

And Baldonis lawyer statement is fine, but obviously a blanket statement like that isn’t all that compelling- which the NYT knows- and I’m sure Baldoni and the PR people would have preferred to have more time to provide detail of what parts of the piece were incorrect, and to provide their perspective, which is what a good journalist typically tries to do, especially for something so inherently he said/she said. It’s just strangely lazy reporting from the NYT, and it’s not like Hollywood gossip is their typical beat. Why the rush to go out with this story?

It's not weird they don't mention how much time the PR people got or anything about them because no one actually cares about them. Of course the story focuses on the main characters.

At some point there may be some look into their situation but that's not the main focus of the story. Like according to Lively's complaint, her assistant and others were present for many of the weird and discomforting things that happened with Baldoni and Heath. No one focuses on that though, they focus on Blake Lively because she's famous and they aren't. Same thing.

And you glossed over the main point. 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece like this. Not for a story like this.

Sure it is. the NYTimes doesn’t give people weeks to respond.

1. You do need to give people any time to respond. That has nothing to do with a defamation case.
2. 10-15 minutes can be fine to meet the norms.
3. 14 hours is a lot.

Former reporter PP who said 14 hours was fine here and thank you. It's very frustrating to see people on this thread asserting totally insane things about journalistic standards and to try and correct them only to be told "you don't know anything about journalism." Lol. I worked in war zones!

Dp. I’m someone who challenged you earlier and your experience makes sense, and why you don’t seem to be understanding why this was a journalistic failure. This is so different than war zone breaking news coverage. This was a long article - more like a feature- that would likely decimate multiple people’s careers- including several who are arguably private individuals- and the NYT basically ran it from the perspective of one person - a single source he said/she said story is just very risky. I’m sure they told themselves that they are safe bc it’s from her complaint - that provides protection as a ‘fair report’ of legal proceedings- but the fact is they clearly worked with BL and didn’t seem to seek any other perspective, and they seemed to rush to publish this even though it was hardly typical breaking news for the NYT. Single source stories are legally risky, why would they risk that over some B/C list celebrity squabble? I don’t get it.

I did not only work in war zones. I also did domestic reporting and in depth stories.

They didn't only have one source. They had Lively but they also had Stephanie Jones at Jonesworks (this is where all the texts came from). They may also have had others.

Also, while this was a feature article, the focus was actually not Lively's lawsuit. Obviously it's discussed and Lively is discussed -- this is the hook that makes the story more newsworthy because Lively is a recognizable figure and the story concerned a movie that had recently come out and done very well. But the story was really about the PR industry. The focus was on the retaliation claims because that's where NYT had concrete evidence to report on (the texts) as well as sources. The title of the story and the general thrust of the piece was on what the PR people did, linking this to another recent high profile case (Depp/Heard) where similar PR tactics were employed, and exposing this aspect of the PR industry.

People on here are fixated on Lively and Baldoni but if you go back and read the original reporting from NYT, it's not *really* about them. It's using their conflict to explore PR and Hollywood and this dark side that many readers likely were unaware of before reading the piece -- how PR might use questionable tactics like astroturfing and social media seeding to guide public opinion about celebrities, and even to torpedo careers. And for this aspect of the story, they DID have more than one source and also nothing about that aspect of the story has been disproven (in fact nothing about their reporting has been disproven at all).

It is essentially a one source/one side story. They didn’t speak to baldoni or the PR people as far as I can tell. And it doesn’t matter that the story was ultimately about the PR business. They brought in baldoni and private individuals.
In their quest to talk about using PR to torpedo careers, they themselves were essentially used to… torpedo careers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not saying this is true, but it makes a lot of sense:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FogudV/


And if it is true, The NY Times was played.

You know what doesn't make a lot of sense? That lady's eyebrows. Or the concept of a person whose career is to "create content" on TikTok that amounts to mindless speculation based on... random Facebook posts she read?

But sure, yes, the NYT "got played." Let's go with that.

The NY Times definitely got played, that’s not really up for debate. But that’s the danger of basing an article on one sources who turns out to be not truthful. Oh well.

Agreed. There's really no excuse for how poorly NYT handled the situation. Megan Twohey lost major credibility with this. Not to mention she recently did a podcast where she just doubled down on the lies.

I’m one of the posters who has vigorously argued that the defamation case is weak. but yeah, I’m surprised the NYTimes has still not learned that reporting on one side of the he-said she-said story is likely to be incredibly poor journalism. if the claim is they are just reporting on the complaint as filed, what’s the point of that? Hardly suits the NYTimes reputation. I don’t think this story was or is worth NYTimes attention unless it can be framed more broadly to be about the evolution of Hollywood.

I don't understand why they didn't go down this route or focus more about the PR agents. That way they could expand on Leslie Stone and Stephanie Jones. There is an interesting story there but it's not between Blake and Justin.

They did! I just wrote about this. If you read the original NYT story it is mostly about the PR angle.

I do think it's weird they don't mention Stephanie Jones in the piece or explain the relationship between her and Nathan/Abel. This was the one aspect of the piece that I found sketchy because they were quite obviously relying on Jones to verify the texts. I have to assume that Jones agreed to work with them on this aspect of the story in exchange for not being dragged into it, which is why the story focuses exclusively on what Baldoni's team did with regards to Lively and does not get into Jones. Though I also don't know enough about the dispute between Jones and Nathan/Abel to know if that was relevant to the story. It may have really just been an employment dispute with no real relationship to the bigger story about PR firms doing this kind of character assassination and perhaps it was reasonable NYT didn't mention it. I'm on the fence about that.

But that's a journalistic ethics question and isn't really relevant to Baldoni's defamation case.

I don’t know why you assume they were working with Jones when she says in her article that she interviewed Blake.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The NYT podcast is very telling.

However, I don’t think he ever thought he’d win it, but wanted discovery.

The billionaire is also Bahai and his wife is involved with Wayfair, so $ spigot is not going to be turned off soon.

Totally disagree, I just listened to it and would like that half hour back. Listen if you want to hear Twohey regurgitate her article while her co worker barely reacts. She doesn’t say one word about how Blake’s complaint came to her attention (CA complaint was not public) nor does she say anything about how she investigated the story. It’s a complete joke, about what you would expect from a newspaper interviewing their own reporter about an article they are being sued for.

I read the transcript in 5 minutes. It’s a good summary for anyone who’s not dialed in.

Do you have a link to it? I can’t find it on the NYT app

Babe, are you trolling with all these questions about where basic things are? I was able to pull up the episode with the transcript after a quick google search.

Huh? What other questions?

DP but there have been multiple questions about this podcast that are like "please summarize it for me here" or "can you link I can't possibly find it." It's weird.

Especially in light of the fact it’s a complete nothing burger, I’d be interested in Twomey being interviewed by another outlet, instead of a NY Times recitation of her article.

NP. I just listened to it. Pretty astounding that the NYT gave all of them just 14 hours to respond. You can argue Baldoni would have a lawyer on call, but the PR people? So weird that they felt the need to rush this story. There was nothing urgent about it that I can see.

That doesn't strike me as "astounding." It sounds pretty typical. If a newspaper does a deeply researched piece on your wrongdoing which includes actual text messages they have verified as true, they aren't going to give you days to get ahead of that narrative and undermine their reporting. They are going to give you enough time to respond and then publish.

But in any case, Baldoni actually responded with a statement within just a couple hours, so it turns out that 14 hours was more than enough.

I don't think we know how much time they gave the PR people, actually. It's not like Baldoni lives with Melissa Nathan. Presumably they contacted people separately.

True, we don’t know if the PR people got extra time, but if they did, it seems odd it wasn’t mentioned. At all. In fact it’s not clear to me they got any direct heads up from this interview, just Baldoni, even though they are made to look pretty terrible.

I worked in journalism for awhile, and 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece that isn’t breaking news and which is so detailed and potentially devastating to various people’s reputations. Weinstein was given far more time, as one example.

And Baldonis lawyer statement is fine, but obviously a blanket statement like that isn’t all that compelling- which the NYT knows- and I’m sure Baldoni and the PR people would have preferred to have more time to provide detail of what parts of the piece were incorrect, and to provide their perspective, which is what a good journalist typically tries to do, especially for something so inherently he said/she said. It’s just strangely lazy reporting from the NYT, and it’s not like Hollywood gossip is their typical beat. Why the rush to go out with this story?

It's not weird they don't mention how much time the PR people got or anything about them because no one actually cares about them. Of course the story focuses on the main characters.

At some point there may be some look into their situation but that's not the main focus of the story. Like according to Lively's complaint, her assistant and others were present for many of the weird and discomforting things that happened with Baldoni and Heath. No one focuses on that though, they focus on Blake Lively because she's famous and they aren't. Same thing.

And you glossed over the main point. 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece like this. Not for a story like this.

Sure it is. the NYTimes doesn’t give people weeks to respond.

1. You do need to give people any time to respond. That has nothing to do with a defamation case.
2. 10-15 minutes can be fine to meet the norms.
3. 14 hours is a lot.

Former reporter PP who said 14 hours was fine here and thank you. It's very frustrating to see people on this thread asserting totally insane things about journalistic standards and to try and correct them only to be told "you don't know anything about journalism." Lol. I worked in war zones!

Dp. I’m someone who challenged you earlier and your experience makes sense, and why you don’t seem to be understanding why this was a journalistic failure. This is so different than war zone breaking news coverage. This was a long article - more like a feature- that would likely decimate multiple people’s careers- including several who are arguably private individuals- and the NYT basically ran it from the perspective of one person - a single source he said/she said story is just very risky. I’m sure they told themselves that they are safe bc it’s from her complaint - that provides protection as a ‘fair report’ of legal proceedings- but the fact is they clearly worked with BL and didn’t seem to seek any other perspective, and they seemed to rush to publish this even though it was hardly typical breaking news for the NYT. Single source stories are legally risky, why would they risk that over some B/C list celebrity squabble? I don’t get it.

I did not only work in war zones. I also did domestic reporting and in depth stories.

They didn't only have one source. They had Lively but they also had Stephanie Jones at Jonesworks (this is where all the texts came from). They may also have had others.

Also, while this was a feature article, the focus was actually not Lively's lawsuit. Obviously it's discussed and Lively is discussed -- this is the hook that makes the story more newsworthy because Lively is a recognizable figure and the story concerned a movie that had recently come out and done very well. But the story was really about the PR industry. The focus was on the retaliation claims because that's where NYT had concrete evidence to report on (the texts) as well as sources. The title of the story and the general thrust of the piece was on what the PR people did, linking this to another recent high profile case (Depp/Heard) where similar PR tactics were employed, and exposing this aspect of the PR industry.

People on here are fixated on Lively and Baldoni but if you go back and read the original reporting from NYT, it's not *really* about them. It's using their conflict to explore PR and Hollywood and this dark side that many readers likely were unaware of before reading the piece -- how PR might use questionable tactics like astroturfing and social media seeding to guide public opinion about celebrities, and even to torpedo careers. And for this aspect of the story, they DID have more than one source and also nothing about that aspect of the story has been disproven (in fact nothing about their reporting has been disproven at all).

Who was their source for the PR stuff? You mean Jones? Who was in an employment dispute with the other two? Was there anyone else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not saying this is true, but it makes a lot of sense:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8FogudV/


And if it is true, The NY Times was played.

You know what doesn't make a lot of sense? That lady's eyebrows. Or the concept of a person whose career is to "create content" on TikTok that amounts to mindless speculation based on... random Facebook posts she read?

But sure, yes, the NYT "got played." Let's go with that.

The NY Times definitely got played, that’s not really up for debate. But that’s the danger of basing an article on one sources who turns out to be not truthful. Oh well.

It's really up for debate. That's the purpose of this thread. Not just to rag on Lively lol. Lots of debate in this thread defending the NYT article as based on factual texts that they cited and printed. Even if they focused on the texts/comms that supported Lively, you can't say those aren't truthful. They're there in black and white, sorry ma'am.

Actually in the podcast, they acknowledge Justin’s claim that surrounding texts which were not included could give the published texts a different meaning.

Did they say why they didn’t include them?

And should they even be admitting to that?? That's basically Justin lawsuit. That they had all the text messages but purposefully excluded context to defame him. Let's say that's not enough for defamation. That admission is enough to wreck their reputations and that's simply will not go away.

It’s likely negligence - good enough to meet the defamation standard for the private PR people - and arguably reckless disregard for the truth- the defamation standard for public figures. I’m just baffled by the NYT here, truly…

No it’s not anywhere close to any of that.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The NYT podcast is very telling.

However, I don’t think he ever thought he’d win it, but wanted discovery.

The billionaire is also Bahai and his wife is involved with Wayfair, so $ spigot is not going to be turned off soon.

Totally disagree, I just listened to it and would like that half hour back. Listen if you want to hear Twohey regurgitate her article while her co worker barely reacts. She doesn’t say one word about how Blake’s complaint came to her attention (CA complaint was not public) nor does she say anything about how she investigated the story. It’s a complete joke, about what you would expect from a newspaper interviewing their own reporter about an article they are being sued for.

I read the transcript in 5 minutes. It’s a good summary for anyone who’s not dialed in.

Do you have a link to it? I can’t find it on the NYT app

Babe, are you trolling with all these questions about where basic things are? I was able to pull up the episode with the transcript after a quick google search.

Huh? What other questions?

DP but there have been multiple questions about this podcast that are like "please summarize it for me here" or "can you link I can't possibly find it." It's weird.

Especially in light of the fact it’s a complete nothing burger, I’d be interested in Twomey being interviewed by another outlet, instead of a NY Times recitation of her article.

NP. I just listened to it. Pretty astounding that the NYT gave all of them just 14 hours to respond. You can argue Baldoni would have a lawyer on call, but the PR people? So weird that they felt the need to rush this story. There was nothing urgent about it that I can see.

That doesn't strike me as "astounding." It sounds pretty typical. If a newspaper does a deeply researched piece on your wrongdoing which includes actual text messages they have verified as true, they aren't going to give you days to get ahead of that narrative and undermine their reporting. They are going to give you enough time to respond and then publish.

But in any case, Baldoni actually responded with a statement within just a couple hours, so it turns out that 14 hours was more than enough.

I don't think we know how much time they gave the PR people, actually. It's not like Baldoni lives with Melissa Nathan. Presumably they contacted people separately.

True, we don’t know if the PR people got extra time, but if they did, it seems odd it wasn’t mentioned. At all. In fact it’s not clear to me they got any direct heads up from this interview, just Baldoni, even though they are made to look pretty terrible.

I worked in journalism for awhile, and 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece that isn’t breaking news and which is so detailed and potentially devastating to various people’s reputations. Weinstein was given far more time, as one example.

And Baldonis lawyer statement is fine, but obviously a blanket statement like that isn’t all that compelling- which the NYT knows- and I’m sure Baldoni and the PR people would have preferred to have more time to provide detail of what parts of the piece were incorrect, and to provide their perspective, which is what a good journalist typically tries to do, especially for something so inherently he said/she said. It’s just strangely lazy reporting from the NYT, and it’s not like Hollywood gossip is their typical beat. Why the rush to go out with this story?

It's not weird they don't mention how much time the PR people got or anything about them because no one actually cares about them. Of course the story focuses on the main characters.

At some point there may be some look into their situation but that's not the main focus of the story. Like according to Lively's complaint, her assistant and others were present for many of the weird and discomforting things that happened with Baldoni and Heath. No one focuses on that though, they focus on Blake Lively because she's famous and they aren't. Same thing.

And you glossed over the main point. 14 hours is not a lot of time for a piece like this. Not for a story like this.

Sure it is. the NYTimes doesn’t give people weeks to respond.

1. You do need to give people any time to respond. That has nothing to do with a defamation case.
2. 10-15 minutes can be fine to meet the norms.
3. 14 hours is a lot.

Former reporter PP who said 14 hours was fine here and thank you. It's very frustrating to see people on this thread asserting totally insane things about journalistic standards and to try and correct them only to be told "you don't know anything about journalism." Lol. I worked in war zones!

Dp. I’m someone who challenged you earlier and your experience makes sense, and why you don’t seem to be understanding why this was a journalistic failure. This is so different than war zone breaking news coverage. This was a long article - more like a feature- that would likely decimate multiple people’s careers- including several who are arguably private individuals- and the NYT basically ran it from the perspective of one person - a single source he said/she said story is just very risky. I’m sure they told themselves that they are safe bc it’s from her complaint - that provides protection as a ‘fair report’ of legal proceedings- but the fact is they clearly worked with BL and didn’t seem to seek any other perspective, and they seemed to rush to publish this even though it was hardly typical breaking news for the NYT. Single source stories are legally risky, why would they risk that over some B/C list celebrity squabble? I don’t get it.

I did not only work in war zones. I also did domestic reporting and in depth stories.

They didn't only have one source. They had Lively but they also had Stephanie Jones at Jonesworks (this is where all the texts came from). They may also have had others.

Also, while this was a feature article, the focus was actually not Lively's lawsuit. Obviously it's discussed and Lively is discussed -- this is the hook that makes the story more newsworthy because Lively is a recognizable figure and the story concerned a movie that had recently come out and done very well. But the story was really about the PR industry. The focus was on the retaliation claims because that's where NYT had concrete evidence to report on (the texts) as well as sources. The title of the story and the general thrust of the piece was on what the PR people did, linking this to another recent high profile case (Depp/Heard) where similar PR tactics were employed, and exposing this aspect of the PR industry.

People on here are fixated on Lively and Baldoni but if you go back and read the original reporting from NYT, it's not *really* about them. It's using their conflict to explore PR and Hollywood and this dark side that many readers likely were unaware of before reading the piece -- how PR might use questionable tactics like astroturfing and social media seeding to guide public opinion about celebrities, and even to torpedo careers. And for this aspect of the story, they DID have more than one source and also nothing about that aspect of the story has been disproven (in fact nothing about their reporting has been disproven at all).

+1. the people insisting that the NYTimes was proven wrong are missing the boat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have Blake and Ryan yet fired the lawyers, MBAs, and PR airheads who war-gamed this scheme which is backfiring into their faces and destroying their careers?

Two ego maniac dummies talked into this by educated seasoned professionals.

I safely assume they wish this would all just go away at this point. What a massive unforced error. Oops!

This won't kill Ryan's career silly rabbit, he's a man.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know how anyone could read the article or listen to the podcast and say this is a pr story. Twohey couldn’t get a sentence out of her mouth on the podcast without adding the qualifier “ according to the complaint”

The Times has been in decline for a few decades. In recent years, they’ve been taken over by former Politico reporters who practice access journalism. The Twohey article is just another example of a Times reporter taking a famous source at her word without regard to truth.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Have Blake and Ryan yet fired the lawyers, MBAs, and PR airheads who war-gamed this scheme which is backfiring into their faces and destroying their careers?

Two ego maniac dummies talked into this by educated seasoned professionals.

I safely assume they wish this would all just go away at this point. What a massive unforced error. Oops!

This comment and the one before it are just gross — someone posting their 🤮

This sort of thing is what sounds like PR people posting to infect popular opinion, and that’s why I object to it. Also it’s stuff like this that got prior threads closed.

Someone who was posting stuff like this said why not, in light of the Bezos girlfriend threads. I don’t read those, but if I did I’d object to that too. Post your 🤮 🤮 🤮 somewhere else. It doesn’t belong here. Last time you insisted on it the thread closed, so if this thread is so important to you, DO BETTER.

DP

My opinion of BL is based on her interviews. I hadn’t given this much thought about any of this until the NYT article. Now I think she’s a jerk who lies. You can’t blame that on Baldoni.

One theme I have seen with her in a few of those interviews that is interesting in light of this lawsuit, is that several times she is asked a fairly innocuous question by an interviewer and she has the most twisted interpretation of the intent that was meant. Like, almost out of touch with reality reaction to the person sitting there as if she has no idea how people generally communicate. She brings the tone from like a 5 to a 100 and goes after the person FAST, but not in a particularly sharp way. But it's like it is her default to jump to being seriously offended.

DP and I completely agree. BL seems dim but mean, very invested in instantly accelerating nothings into somethings.

Her sense of self and reality seems pretty distorted even under the best of circumstances (interviews meant to pump her up and make her appear amazing!) I've read the complaints and I'm not going to comment on this legally, but she's basically volatile, emotional, and out of touch to an extreme degree when even answering basic questions, so I do question things that made her, "uncomfortable."

100%. A known history of WILDLY misinterpreting social interactions can't be ignored. Her "uncomfortable" bar is both very low and all over the place; she'll go for the jugular if you say her hair is pretty so who knows how she read any of these interactions.