Them too - The Reckoning thread

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A day after allegations of emotional abuse and sexual assault were leveled against Chris Hardwick by an ex-girlfriend, AMC has decided today to officially pull the plug on their long time host’s talk show and appearances at San Diego Comic-Con next month.

We have had a positive working relationship with Chris Hardwick for many years,” said the home of The Walking Dead in a statement on Saturday, one day before Season 2 of Talking With Chris Hardwick was set to debut. “We take the troubling allegations that surfaced yesterday very seriously. While we assess the situation, Talking with Chris Hardwick will not air on AMC, and Chris has decided to step aside from moderating planned AMC and BBC America panels at Comic-Con International in San Diego next month.”

Maintaining radio silence all day yesterday, the cabler had been under increasing pressure to address the premiere of Talking and its overall relationship in lieu of the disturbing claims that Chloe Dykstra made public online early on Friday. Additionally, as Legendary Entertainment wiped all mention of Harwick from the Nerdist site he founded and once owned, AMC found itself up against Hollywood heavyweight Talking guests who wanted no association with Hardwick and the looming SDCC realities.

With Hardwick having been announced on Thursday as the moderator of the first Comic-Con panel of the first female Doctor Who and widely presumed to be handling similar duties, as he has in past years, for TWD panel in the massive Hall H, the accusations swirling around the host now threatened to knee cap a prime promotional platform for AMC.

Clearly in crisis mode, Hardwick himself waited until late late on Friday to address the allegations.

“I was heartbroken to read Chloe’s post,” Hardwick said in his own statement. “Our three year relationship was not perfect—we were ultimately not a good match and argued—even shouted at each other—but I loved her, and did my best to uplift and support her as a partner and companion in any way and at no time did I sexually assault her.”

Hardwick’s former longtime girlfriend Dykstra wrote a first-person account of their three-year relationship Friday on Medium. While the TV personality and host never mentioned Hardwick by name, details about the “mildly successful podcaster” who grew into “a powerhouse CEO of his own company” and the timeline of the relationship suggested strongly that she was referring to him – an implication that Hardwick obviously confirmed in his response.

The posting by Dykstra detailed a three-year relationship in which she was restricted from going out at night, having male friends or speaking in public places, among other controlling behavior by the unnamed Hardwick. It also claimed that she was the victim of sexual and emotional assault by Hardwick

Dykstra also alleged that after she left him, Hardwick and a female colleague had her successfully blacklisted from a lot of the industry, calling companies she worked for “to get me fired by threatening to never work with them”

Among Chloe Dykstra’s explosive abuse allegations against Chris Hardwick that are now riling up his Nerdist geek culture is an assertion that her ex-boyfriend was obsessed with celebrity.

That alleged obsession seemed to play out in the family the seemingly affable TV host and podcaster married into. In 2016, two years after he broke up with Dykstra, he married Lydia Hearst.

Model and actress Lydia Hearst, 33, is the daughter of famous kidnapping victim-turned socialite Patty Hearst. She’s also the great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. The media titan, of course, was one of America’s original celebrity moguls who famously had a movie star mistress, built Hearst Castle (where Lydia Hearst had her bachelorette party) and became the inspiration for “Citizen Kane,” arguably the greatest American film ever made.

First Patty Hearst tweeted: “Beware the person who stabs you and then tells the world they’re the one who’s bleeding.”

She also retweeted a Hollywood Reporter story about Hardwick’s denial. Then in reply to a TMZ tweet about the unfolding scandal, Hearst apparently wrote “Bunny Boiler,” according to this screen grab.

As this person suggested, this reply appears to reference the 1987 film “Fatal Attraction” in which Glenn Close plays a woman who flips out after a one-night-stand with a married father portrayed by Michael Douglas. Close’s Alex Forrest begins stalking and terrorizing Douglas’ character and his family, and famously takes his young daughter’s pet rabbit and boils it on the family’s stove.

In any case, it seems clear that Hardwick’s mother-in-law has his back.

But interestingly, Patty Hearst earlier this year voiced her own #MeToo and Time’s Up concerns by denouncing an upcoming Fox movie biopic and CNN documentary series about her 1974 kidnapping, saying both were “romanticizing” her rape when she was a hostage of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Variety reported.

Suzanne Somers doesn’t think Morgan Freeman should be lumped in with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby as a sexual predator because, after all, the Oscar-winning actor is simply a “big flirt.”

Somers, 71, came to the defense of her longtime friend Tuesday, two months after Freeman was accused of sexually harassing eight women in a lengthy CNN report.

“Well, this probably won’t be real popular, but I think that women… I totally understand the (Harvey) Weinstein and Bill Cosby, that’s like, of course,” Somers said on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.” “But you know, like Morgan Freeman’s a big flirt. I know him really well. He sees you, and he’ll like your dress and he’ll like your hair and he’ll like a lot of things.”

And though it was Weinstein’s downfall that helped spark the #MeToo movement, Somers says she hopes men and women in the workplace will be able to find a “nice medium” between harassment and good, old fashion fun.

“I hope the dance doesn’t stop. It’s seduction, it’s flirting, all those things are really fun, so I hope there’s a way we can find a nice medium with that,” she said.

Freeman, 81, was hit with eight accusations of sexual harassment in May from women who claimed the Oscar-winning actor would frequently cross the line with sexually inappropriate comments and unwanted advances, like skirt lifting.

Freeman denied all of the allegations, and apologized if any of his attempts at humor rubbed women the wrong way.

time flies, don't it?

About nine months after the #MeToo movement against sexual violence took America by storm and spread around the world, few would disagree that it has accomplished real gains — notably, shining the light of day on wrongdoing by powerful abusers who were once shielded by their status.

But from the start, #MeToo skeptics — myself included — have warned about the danger of equating accusation with guilt and blowing trivial misdeeds or misunderstandings out of proportion. Now, the voices of skepticism are growing louder, and some say that #MeToo may have reached a turning point in judging complaints more carefully. If so, it’s about time.

The latest #MeToo rethinking has been prompted by the accusations that nearly torpedoed the career of Junot Díaz, the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American novelist. In May, when Díaz spoke at the Sydney Writers’ Festival in Australia, writer Zinzi Clemmons confronted him about his alleged abusive sexual behavior toward her six years ago. A few hours later, Clemmons, who teaches writing at Occidental College in Los Angeles, amplified her allegations on Twitter, claiming that when she was a 26-year-old graduate student at Columbia University and invited Díaz to speak at a workshop, he “used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss” her. She also said Díaz had “exploited” other young women.

Writers Monica Byrne and Carmen Maria Machado spoke up on Twitter to support Clemmons with accounts of what they considered verbal abuse and misogynistic behavior by Díaz. Byrne said he yelled at her when they had an argument at a dinner. Machado claimed that when she questioned Díaz about his character’s treatment of women during a book-tour appearance, he responded with “a blast of misogynist rage and public humiliation.”

Díaz withdrew from the festival and issued a vaguely contrite statement taking “responsibility” for his past and affirming the importance of teaching men about “consent and boundaries.” Some stores dropped his books. The Boston Review, where he is an editor, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches, announced an investigation into the charges against him. It seemed that his downfall would soon be complete.

But events took a different turn, particularly after an audio recording of Díaz’s exchange with Machado was posted online and showed something different from her account. There was no rage or bullying; Díaz sounded a bit defensive but polite. Machado was reduced to arguing that the audio didn’t “reflect body language or atmosphere” and that those who thought it was benign were not good at “reading subtext.”

Meanwhile, many women who knew Díaz came to his defense. Clemmons’ accusation was contradicted by a friendly email she sent Díaz after the workshop, making no mention of a kiss. A Columbia professor recalled seeing her after the event and, according to a report in The Boston Globe, “described her as delighted, not shaken.” (In his interview with the Globe, Díaz was adamant that he never kissed Clemmons and more or less repudiated his semi-apology; while Clemmons reiterated her claim, she refused to clarify whether the alleged kiss was on the mouth.)

Last month, both MIT and the Boston Review announced that Díaz was keeping his posts and that the claims against him did not warrant dismissal. This is the first high-profile exoneration of a man facing #MeToo accusations — a development that, as The Boston Globe story notes, reverses the familiar script.

Disney has parted ways with director James Gunn after a number of what the studio called “indefensible” tweets he wrote years ago resurfaced.

“The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James’ Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him,” Alan Horn, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, said in a statement obtained by CNN.

Gunn had come under fire in recent days after his comments, which made references to pedophilia and molestation, came to light.

On Thursday, Gunn acknowledged the attention his previous social media comments were getting in a series of tweets.

“Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor,” he wrote. “It’s not to say I’m better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago; today I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger. My days saying something just because it’s shocking and trying to get a reaction are over.”

He added: “For the record, when I made these shocking jokes, I wasn’t living them out. I know this is a weird statement to make, and seems obvious, but, still, here I am, saying it.”

Thousands have signed an online petition for the Walt Disney Co. to rehire Guardians of the Galaxy writer and director James Gunn after he was fired from the third film in the series Friday.

Gunn had been targeted for criticism by figures connected to a far-right fringe movement, who began highlighting a series of offensive shock-jokes Gunn made, some more than a decade old, on Twitter and his blog.

Fellow director Joe Carnahan (The Grey, Smokin’ Aces) shared the petition on Twitter, where it had collected more than 5,000 signatures as of Saturday afternoon. By early evening, it had risen to nearly 16,000.

By Sunday morning, the total had climbed to 51,000

Gunn has lately used his social media platform to deliver scathing criticism of Donald Trump, which apparently captured the attention of controversial right-wing activist Mike Cernovich, who encouraged his followers to bombard Disney and Marvel accounts with screenshots of perverse jokes about molestation and other taboo subjects that Gunn had made over the years.

Gunn had also joked about directing a movie version of the beloved children’s book The Giving Tree in which the tree performs a sex act on its human companion

Gunn had already apologized for many of these remarks back in 2012, as some of his supporters tried to emphasize.

After getting unexpectedly fired from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” series by Disney, James Gunn has found support from Selma Blair, one of the women of #MeToo who came out about her sexual harassment at the hands of director James Toback last year.

“If people are punished despite changing, then what does that teach people about owning mistakes and evolving?” asked Blair in a tweet. “This man is one of the good ones.”

Blair also linked to a Change.org petition that has over 80,000 signatures asking Disney to reinstate Gunn as the director of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,

Kimberly Guilfoyle was reportedly the subject of an internal investigation at Fox News for sexual misconduct and inappropriate workplace behavior before she departed the network last week

When it was announced ‘The Five’ co-host would be leaving to help her boyfriend, Donald Trump Jr., campaign for the Republicans during the 2018 midterms, it was billed as her decision — but rumors to the contrary started to swirl almost immediately.

According to a new Huffington Post report — built on a year’s worth of interviews with 21 anonymous sources at Fox News and parent company 21st Century Fox — Guilfoyle’s exit was actually prompted by a slew of misconduct allegations, which include showing off personal pictures of male genitalia to her co-workers and then “identifying whose genitals they were.”

Sources also alleged that she regularly discussed her sex life at work and was emotionally abusive toward hair and makeup artists as well as support staff.

Guilfoyle also regularly railed against other woman working at the station and often criticized Jeanine Pirro for being too old to be on television, according to sources. The 67-year-old judge is the host of the popular show “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”
She reportedly received a “stern warning” over her behavior from Kevin Lord, the head of Fox News HR in the fall of 2017. And following an internal investigation into her conduct, which kicked off last year, the television personality was asked to exit the network by July, Huffington Post reported.

She tried to delay her impending departure, sources said, at one point appealing to Rupert Murdoch, the chair of Fox News’ parent company, to allow her to remain. Staff feared her ties to the Trump family and her relationship with the President’s eldest son would prevent her exit, but he network confirmed her departure on July 20 with a brief and vague statement.

“Fox News has parted ways with Kimberly Guilfoyle,” it read.
Sources told Huffington Post it’s fairly typical for the network to pressure staff into resigning rather than firing them so to avoid any negative press and general fallout.

Her attorney, John Singer, pushed back against the allegations in a statement, claiming Guilfoyle’s former co-workers are only interested in financial gain.

Guilfoyle, who worked with Fox News for more than a decade, also sparked controversy last year when she defended her former boss, Roger Ailes against several claims of sexual harassment.

For more than twenty years, Leslie Moonves has been one of the most powerful media executives in America. As the chairman and C.E.O. of CBS Corporation, he oversees shows ranging from “60 Minutes” to “The Big Bang Theory.” His portfolio includes the premium cable channel Showtime, the publishing house Simon & Schuster, and a streaming service, CBS All Access. Moonves, who is sixty-eight, has a reputation for canny hiring and project selection. The Wall Street Journal recently called him a “TV programming wizard”; the Hollywood Reporter dubbed him a “Wall Street Hero.” In the tumultuous field of network television, he has enjoyed rare longevity as a leader. Last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he earned nearly seventy million dollars, making him one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the world.

In recent months, Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood’s #MeToo movement. In December, he helped found the Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, which is chaired by Anita Hill. “It’s a watershed moment,” Moonves said at a conference in November. “I think it’s important that a company’s culture will not allow for this. And that’s the thing that’s far-reaching. There’s a lot we’re learning. There’s a lot we didn’t know.”

But Moonves’s private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result. “What happened to me was a sexual assault, and then I was fired for not participating,” the actress and writer Illeana Douglas told me. All the women said they still feared that speaking out would lead to retaliation from Moonves, who is known in the industry for his ability to make or break careers. “He has gotten away with it for decades,” the writer Janet Jones, who alleges that she had to shove Moonves off her after he forcibly kissed her at a work meeting, told me. “And it’s just not O.K.”

Thirty current and former employees of CBS told me that such behavior extended from Moonves to important parts of the corporation, including CBS News and “60 Minutes,” one of the network’s most esteemed programs. During Moonves’s tenure, men at CBS News who were accused of sexual misconduct were promoted, even as the company paid settlements to women with complaints. It isn’t clear whether Moonves himself knew of the allegations, but he has a reputation for being closely involved in management decisions across the network. Some of the allegations, such as those against the former anchor Charlie Rose, as reported by the Washington Post, have already become public. Other claims are being reported here for the first time. Nineteen current and former employees told me that Jeff Fager, the former chairman of CBS News and the current executive producer of “60 Minutes,” allowed harassment in the division. “It’s top down, this culture of older men who have all this power and you are nothing,” one veteran producer told me. “The company is shielding lots of bad behavior.”

In a statement, Moonves said, “Throughout my time at CBS, we have promoted a culture of respect and opportunity for all employees, and have consistently found success elevating women to top executive positions across our company. I recognize that there were times decades ago when I may have made some women uncomfortable by making advances. Those were mistakes, and I regret them immensely. But I always understood and respected—and abided by the principle—that ‘no’ means ‘no,’ and I have never misused my position to harm or hinder anyone’s career. This is a time when we all are appropriately focused on how we help improve our society, and we at CBS are committed to being part of the solution.” According to CBS, there have been no misconduct claims and no settlements against Moonves during his twenty-four years at the network. A statement from the company said, “CBS is very mindful of all workplace issues and takes each report of misconduct very seriously. We do not believe, however, that the picture of our company created in The New Yorker represents a larger organization that does its best to treat its tens of thousands of employees with dignity and respect. We are seeing vigorous discourse in our country about equality, inclusion, and safety in the workplace, and CBS is committed to being part of the solution to those important issues.”

The allegations are surfacing at a time when CBS is engaged in an increasingly acrimonious fight with its former parent company, Viacom, which acquired CBS in 1999 and spun it off as a separate entity seven years later. A holding company founded by the mogul Sumner Redstone still owns a majority stake in both Viacom and CBS, and Redstone’s daughter and heir, Shari Redstone, has sought to reunite the businesses. Moonves has resisted the move, and in May Redstone’s holding company and CBS filed lawsuits against each other. All of the women making allegations against Moonves began speaking to me before the current lawsuits, in independent interviews carried out during the past eight months. All said that they were not motivated by any allegiance in the corporate battle. But several felt that this was an opportunity to examine a workplace culture that many of the women in this story described as toxic.

Illeana Douglas, who later received an Emmy nomination for her role in HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” was introduced to MoonvesWhen Douglas met with Moonves at his office, she began to raise concerns about the “Queens” script, but Moonves, she recalled, cut her off. “He interrupts me to ask me am I single,” she said. Douglas, whose nearly decade-long relationship with Scorsese was coming to an end, was caught off guard. “I didn’t know what to say at that point,” she told me. “I was, like, ‘I’m single, yes, no, maybe.’ ” She began talking about the script, but Moonves interjected, asking to kiss her. According to Douglas, he said that they didn’t have to tell her manager: “It’ll just be between you and me. Come on, you’re not some nubile virgin.”


As Douglas attempted to turn the focus back to work, Moonves, she said, grabbed her. “In a millisecond, he’s got one arm over me, pinning me,” she said. Moonves was “violently kissing” her, holding her down on the couch with her arms above her head. “What it feels like to have someone hold you down—you can’t breathe, you can’t move,” she said. “The physicality of it was horrendous.” She recalled lying limp and unresponsive beneath him. “You sort of black out,” she told me. “You think, How long is this going to go on? I was just looking at this nice picture of his family and his kids. I couldn’t get him off me.” She said it was only when Moonves, aroused, pulled up her skirt and began to thrust against her that her fear overcame her paralysis. She told herself that she had to do something to stop him. “At that point, you’re a trapped animal,” she told me. “Your life is flashing before your eyes.” Moonves, in what Douglas assumed was an effort to be seductive, paused and asked, “So, what do you think?” Douglas told me, “My decision was to get out of it by joking my way out, so he feels flattered.” Thinking that reminding Moonves that he was her boss might discourage him, she told him, “Yes, for the head of a network you’re some good kisser.” Moonves frowned and got up. She scrambled to find her briefcase. “Well, this has been great. Thanks,” she recalled saying, moving toward the door. “I’ve got to go now.”

Moonves, she said, followed her to the door and blocked her path. He backed her up to the wall, pressing against her, with his face close to hers. “It was physically scary,” Douglas told me. “He says, ‘We’re going to keep this between you and me, right?’ ” Attempting to put him off with a joke, she replied, “No, sir, we won’t tell anyone that you’re a good kisser.” Moonves released her and, without looking at her, walked away. “It was so invasive,” she said of the threatening encounter. “It has stayed with me the rest of my life, that terror.”

Outside Moonves’s office, she began to cry. “My skirt is all twisted,” she recalled. “I’m standing in the hall and I thought of his family.” Moonves’s assistant, sitting nearby, asked whether her parking needed to be validated. Douglas told me, “I remember thinking, Does she know? Does this happen all the time?” in 1996. At the time, she was meeting with networks, looking for a deal to write and perform for television. Moonves, who was then the president of CBS Entertainment, seemed to take a personal interest in her. He told Douglas that he was a fan of her performances in the Martin Scorsese films “Cape Fear” and “Goodfellas,” and urged her to work with CBS. “There was the big sell—he was telling me, ‘You’re gonna get a house with a pool, you’re gonna love it, it’s a great life,’ ” Douglas recalled. She agreed to sign a holding deal with CBS, which promised to pay her three hundred thousand dollars to appear exclusively in the network’s programs.

After the second rehearsal, Moonves took Douglas aside. “ ‘What the f**k do you think you’re doing out there? You’re not even trying,’ ” Douglas recalled Moonves saying. She took it as a reference to her failure to comply with his advances and to maintain her composure afterward. Douglas told me that she had “played by all the rules, I didn’t say anything, and now he was berating me.” On set, she struggled to keep her comedic timing, and cried in front of other cast members.

Several days into rehearsals, Moonves called Douglas at home. “It was, you know, ‘You make me f*****g sick. You are not funny,’ ” she recalled. Moonves told her that she wouldn’t “get a f*****g dime” of the money she was owed, and that she would “never work at this network again.” (In a statement, CBS said that Moonves acknowledges trying to kiss Douglas, but that “he denies any characterization of ‘sexual assault,’ intimidation, or retaliatory action,” including berating her on set and personally firing her from “Queens.”)

Prophet told me that Moonves and CBS Business Affairs called her to say that Douglas would be replaced on the show and that her deal would be cancelled. According to Douglas, Prophet called her and “said I’d burned all my bridges at CBS, that she was firing me.” (Prophet recalled firing Douglas and said that the two had a heated exchange. She said that she didn’t know about Douglas’s allegation, and denied the comment about burning bridges. “There are no bridges at CBS,” she said. “There is just Les Moonves.”) Douglas said that her agent, Patrick Whitesell, who was then at Creative Artists Agency, later called to say that the agency wished her well in future endeavors of her own. “I love the way C.A.A. fired me,” Douglas said. “They never told me I was fired. They just kept wishing me the best of luck.” (Whitesell told me that he had not been aware of Douglas’s allegation and did not recall that her departure from C.A.A. was related to the dissolution of her CBS deal.)

Douglas and Sobel both saw the miniseries as cover for a settlement; she didn’t even know what the show was about. “I go from being sexually assaulted, fired for not having sex with Les Moonves, fired by everyone, to ‘We are going to pay you in full and we also want you to be on this miniseries,’ ” Douglas recalled. “My understanding is, this is what they were going to do in exchange for not suing.”

Shortly after the offer came, Douglas received a call from Moonves. “ ‘So, you’re gonna do the mini?’ ” she remembered him asking. Although she wanted accountability, she was still frightened, and said that she would do it. She recalled Moonves, sounding upbeat, remarking, “ ‘Tits and guns, baby. Tits and guns.’ ” (Douglas later learned that the miniseries, called “Bella Mafia,” focussed on the women of an Italian crime family and emphasized sex and violence.) Moonves asked Douglas if they were “O.K.,” and Douglas replied, “Yes, sir.”

More than a decade earlier, in the spring of 1985, Janet Jones was attempting to break into the industry as a writer. The producer Mike Marvin liked an idea that Jones had for a screenplay, and helped broker a meeting between her and Moonves, who at the time was a vice-president at Twentieth Century Fox. It was Jones’s first pitch meeting in Hollywood. Moonves’s assistant scheduled a late-afternoon appointment at his office.

When Jones arrived, many employees were leaving for the day, but Moonves’s assistant was there. “I had my briefcase and my pants suit,” Jones recalled. “I was really prepared.” Moonves surprised her by asking if she wanted a glass of wine. She declined, sat down on the couch, and began pitching her screenplay. Suddenly, Jones told me, “he came around the corner of the table and threw himself on top of me. It was very fast.” Moonves, she said, began trying to kiss her. Jones said that she struggled, and then shoved Moonves away hard, yelling, “What do you think you’re doing?” Moonves, appearing startled, got up. “ ‘Well, I was hitting on you. I wanted a kiss,’ ” she recalled him saying. Jones began to leave. “He said, ‘Oh, come on, it’s nothing,’ ” she said. “ ‘Calm down, don’t be so excited.’ ”

Not long afterward, Jones received a call from Moonves’s assistant, who said that she had Moonves on the line. “My heart went into my feet,” Jones recalled. Moonves began shouting at her. “ ‘People’s reputations are important. Do you understand?’ ” she remembered him saying. “ ‘I’m warning you. I will ruin your career. You will never get a writing job. No one will hire you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’ ” Jones hung up the phone, then threw up. “I was just absolutely mortified. Does this mean he’ll be putting me on a list somewhere and I’ll never get a job?” she recalled thinking. “This person could stop me from doing this passion, this career I had spent my whole life putting together. It’s kind of hard to fathom that one person could do that, but he could.” (CBS said that Moonves has no recollection of the interactions with Jones.)

Jones told me that she found the threats more scarring than the original incident. She said, “The revenge behavior, the ‘I’ll get you for not kissing me, I’ll get you for not doing what the hell I want you to do’—it never quite leaves you.” Years later, she saw him at an industry event and, she said, “I almost fainted. I was still terrified.”

Two other women described Moonves forcibly touching or kissing them during business meetings. The producer Christine Peters was an industry veteran when she first encountered Moonves, in the early aughts. She had worked as a story analyst for the company behind “Rain Man” and “Gorillas in the Mist” before becoming a production head for Robert Evans, who had produced “The Godfather” and “Chinatown.” She became a close friend and confidante of Sumner Redstone, the owner of Viacom, to whom she was at times romantically linked in the press. (Peters, like the other women in this story, said that she had no interest in the battle over the future of Redstone’s empire.) After Viacom acquired CBS, Redstone enlisted Peters to help build a rapport with Moonves, who was the president and C.E.O. of CBS Television at the time. They had a series of dinners with Moonves and his wife in 2003 and 2004.

Peters produced the 2003 romantic comedy “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days,” which was based on a book she had acquired, and which ultimately grossed more than a hundred and seventy-seven million dollars. “I was proud to be bringing females into the seats and really addressing them,” she told me. In 2006, Moonves, who had become the chairman of CBS, had dinner with Peters and Redstone to discuss his plans to launch a film studio, CBS Films, which was founded the next year. Moonves was considering executives to oversee the endeavor, and Redstone suggested Peters. Moonves seemed excited about the idea.

When Moonves and Peters met at his office to discuss the prospect, Peters told me, she came with a detailed presentation on her business model, which focussed on female audiences. “It was: this is the demographic, here are the underutilized release dates, here’s why female buyers predominate,” she said. “I remember him being very enthusiastic, saying it made a lot of sense.” She was sitting on a couch and, as she continued her pitch, he sat down uncomfortably close. “He said, ‘This is really great,’ ” she recalled. “Then he just put a hand up my skirt.” Moonves, she said, slid his hand up her thigh and touched her underwear.

“I was in a state of shock,” Peters recalled. Immediately, she worried about how Moonves would react to a rejection. She tried to get out of the situation by gathering her documents and saying, “Oh, wow, oh, my God, it’s late, I have to be at another meeting. Can we finish this tomorrow? I’m so excited! So excited!” Moonves, she recalled, suggested that he walk her to her car. Fearing further advances, Peters said that she had a driver outside. She had come to the meeting with a colleague, who was waiting in the lobby. The colleague told me that Peters emerged earlier than anticipated, appearing shaken, and said that they had to leave quickly. An acquaintance of Peters’s told me that she recounted the story to him several years ago, describing an advance from a top executive and a job that she didn’t get afterward, without naming Moonves. Last year, Peters told him that the executive was Moonves. (CBS said that Moonves categorically denies any alleged touching or inappropriate conduct during the meeting.)

prominent actress who played a police officer on a long-running CBS program, who was too frightened of reprisals to use her name, said that she also attended a business meeting with Moonves that ended in unwanted advances. The actress had known Moonves for years. In the late eighties, at the height of her show’s popularity, Moonves, who was then at a production company called Lorimar, requested a lunch meeting at a restaurant. There, Moonves told the actress that he had long had a crush on her but had not said anything to her because she had been in a relationship with a mutual friend. She declined his advance but thanked him for lunch. “It wasn’t offensive,” she recalled. In 1995, when Moonves became president of CBS Entertainment, the actress called to congratulate him. “He said, ‘You should have f****d me when I asked you to,’ and I said, ‘No s**t!’ ” the actress told me. They laughed.

Soon afterward, CBS Business Affairs informed the actress that her series deal with CBS was being terminated. She called Moonves and expressed shock. He requested a lunch meeting in his private dining room at the office. She told me, “I went in, I thought, to make a deal.” At the lunch, Moonves told her that he intended to focus on younger talent, and that she was too old. “Then he again said, ‘I’ve always been so attracted to you,’ ” she told me. “I was so upset. I said, ‘Jesus, Leslie, I’m gonna go.’ ” Moonves asked her to sit down. She did so, pushing food around her plate until she had to leave. Then, she told me, “I walked over and leaned to give him a kiss on the cheek.” Moonves, she said, grabbed her and forcibly kissed her: “He shoved his tongue down my throat. I mean shoved.”

Appalled, she pushed him away. “He had approached me to go to bed with him twice, but he did it politely,” she said. “But this time he just stuck his tongue down my throat.” As she left, she began to cry. “No one had ever done that to me before,” she said. “I found it sickening.”

The actress thought that the consequences would be too great if she told CBS about the incident. “I never reported it,” she told me. “I just thought, Gee, there goes my career.” At an event not long afterward, she encountered a showrunner who has overseen multiple programs at CBS, and told her the story. The showrunner, who had also worked with Moonves, recalled that the actress was still hurt by the incident and told me that she was “not surprised” by the story. “I had already had to deal with misogynist bullying from him myself,” she told me.

Two women told me that they rebuffed unwanted advances from Moonves in professional settings, and that they believed career opportunities disappeared as a result. Dinah Kirgo, who won an Emmy as a writer for “The Tracey Ullman Show,” first encountered Moonves in the early eighties, when he was the vice-president of development at Saul Ilson Productions, a partnership with Columbia Pictures Television. She and her sister and producing partner, Julie Kirgo, met with Moonves and others about a television deal. “We left the meeting very confident we had an over-all deal with Leslie,” Kirgo told me. The sisters told their agent to expect an offer from Moonves.

Instead, shortly after Kirgo got home, Moonves called her directly. “He said, ‘That was a great meeting, now we have to go out to dinner,’ ” she recalled. Kirgo replied that she and Julie would be happy to have dinner with him. “He said, ‘No, just you and me.’ He said, ‘You’re very expensive, and I need to know you’re worth it,’ ” Kirgo told me. “I was sort of in shock and I said, ‘Well, Leslie, I don’t think your wife would appreciate us having that kind of dinner.’ ” Moonves coldly ended the conversation. (CBS said that Moonves has no recollection of the meeting or the phone call.)

Kirgo and her sister never heard from Moonves again. Afterward, Kirgo’s agents told her they had received reports that she had a reputation for being difficult to work with. Kirgo told me that she had never heard complaints before, and that she believed saying no to Moonves had hurt her career. “It’s very insidious, what he did,” she said.

Fager has tried to keep the allegations about the treatment of women at “60 Minutes” from surfacing publicly. According to the Times, in 2015 Fager took over the writing of a book about “60 Minutes” after the original author, Richard Zoglin, began asking people about the subject. In April, as two Washington Post reporters, Irin Carmon and Amy Brittain, were reporting an article about the allegations of harassment at CBS News, including complaints about Fager and Rosen, lawyers retained by Fager threatened to sue the Post, and presented testimonials about Fager’s good character. “There was this ham-handed effort to make women at the show say Jeff was a wonderful person,” one producer said. “It was so obvious we were doing it with a gun to our heads.” Fager’s lawyers also attacked the professionalism of the two reporters. In the end, the paper published a story that included complaints of harassment against Charlie Rose from dozens of women, but not allegations about Fager or Rosen. In a statement, the Post said, “The reporting throughout was vigorous and sustained and fully supported by Post editors. Nothing that met our longstanding standards for publication was left out. Nor did outside pressures, legal or otherwise, determine what was published.” CBS employees told me that they were alarmed by the attempts to kill the reporting. “The hypocrisy of an investigative news program shutting down an investigative print story is incredible,” one told me.

Fager said, “There’s a reason these awful allegations have not been published before—despite the efforts of a few former employees who did not succeed at ‘60 Minutes.’ It is because they are false, anonymous, and do not hold up to editorial scrutiny.”

The CBS chief compliance officer said, “CBS previously retained attorney Betsy Plevan of Proskauer Rose to conduct an independent investigation of alleged misconduct at CBS News. Ms. Plevan’s work is ongoing, and includes investigating allegations in this story. CBS has taken the allegations reported in the press seriously, and respects the role of the press in pursuing the truth, which is a role that is central to the mission of CBS News.”

In June, Carmon, in a speech accepting a Mirror Award for the Post’s reporting on Charlie Rose, warned that stories of abuse by powerful men in the news industry were still being suppressed. “The stories that we have been doing are actually about a system. The system has lawyers and a good reputation. It has publicists,” she said. “Indeed, the system is sitting in this room. Some more than others. The system is still powerful men getting stories killed that I believe will someday see the light of day.” Fager was seated in the audience, and later in the ceremony accepted an award on behalf of “60 Minutes.

You know, Hollywood used to be like this place to inspire dreams and wonder, but these days, at least to me, it's looking more and more like a nest of vipers. Big money, big interests, populated by actors who would thus all be very skilled manipulators if they wanted to be. How do you know who's telling the truth and who's scheming? It all looks very ugly.