As you’ve seen throughout the day today, there are a number of accusations directed at Mark Halperin now, and he has lost a movie deal and more.
And according to the Daily Beast’s report, this was something that could’ve been seen coming. Just like Hollywood’s “open secret” about the abuse from Harvey Weinstein, apparently “everybody knew” Halperin was a danger zone for young female reporters.
According to numerous sources at NBC, MSNBC, ABC, and Bloomberg—who previously spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely—the private allegations of Halperin’s sexual misconduct were an open secret, particularly in New York City and D.C. political media, for many years.
People just didn’t feel emboldened to talk or speak out, in part due to Halperin’s position of power in the industry.
“Everybody knew [about Mark],” one prominent cable-news host told The Daily Beast. “I’d been warning young women reporters about Mark for a long time.”
At Hot Air, Allahpundit points out this isn’t necessarily just a matter of unwanted advances.
Emily Miller, the one Halperin accuser who’s gone on the record, hasn’t followed up (yet) with any details of what happened but this afternoon she did retweet this item that was posted 11 days ago. She doesn’t explicitly say that the mystery man here is Halperin but the fact that she’s republishing the item while she’s at the center of the news about him speaks volumes:
That's totally untrue. A top exec at a TV broadcast network held me down and tried to force me to have sex. I was young and blamed myself. https://t.co/6RAFwbMSVx
— Emily Miller (@EmilyMiller) October 16, 2017
There’s a word for what she describes there, and it ain’t “harassment.”One curiosity: In all of the Halperin accusations today, there’s no claim that he promised to advance someone’s career if they slept with him or threatened to harm their career if they didn’t. Even the seventh accuser who spoke to the Daily Beast says Halperin never threatened retaliation when she spurned him. I note that not because it minimizes the alleged offenses — read that Miller tweet again — but because it makes it harder to understand the industry silence about his behavior.
What an ugly mess.