When USC reached a settlement of $1.1 billion with former patients of George Tyndall on Thursday, the Annenberg Media Center published a piece right after the news broke because they wrote the story on embargo. This means that the journalists were aware the settlement was made but agreed to wait until the news broke before publishing the story.
After reading the Annenberg article, I was surprised that no survivors were quoted in the piece. I reached out to the author and USC student Nate MacKay for further explanation on the process of writing the story.
“We didn’t reach out to any survivors primarily because of time, so I think a separate piece on [the survivors] and their reaction to the settlement would be worth doing,” said McKay. “We also didn’t know which survivors would be comfortable being reached out to and identified, but after the article was initially published, I watched and updated based on the news conference where a bunch of them spoke.”
As I’ve noticed more recently, you learn something new (for me, about journalism) every day. I didn’t know what publishing a piece on embargo meant, and I was curious as to how this deadline impacted overall coverage. So, I took a look at the articles published by the LA Times and New York Times about the Tyndall case to compare how these stories differed from the Annenberg Media Center’s coverage (both in article and TV news form).
Personally, I thought the LA Times article was the most interesting because it included emotional voices from the survivors:
“I started shaking, I started crying,” said Brennan Heil, a 2019 graduate, of learning
the news from an alert on her phone. “It’s like an indescribable feeling ... the fact that
this is over...that they have agreed, ‘Yes, we did something wrong.’”
Hearing these words from one of the “final 710 accusers who settled lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday for a total of $852 million” was moving because it made the case seem more personal. That being said, I think it’s important to think about covering stories that deal with sexual abuse because it can be traumatizing for victims to re-live certain experiences. In this case, I think the LA Times did a good job focusing on the reaction from survivors rather than the abuse itself.
The New York Times article also spoke with survivors and similar to the LA Times they quoted a statement from the USC Board of Trustees. But, the NYT piece also offered a perspective from the President of Title IX Administrators Brett Sokolow, who deals with sexual abuse on university campuses.
“It is by far the largest sexual settlement ever. It’s a recognition of suffering, and it’s a pretty stunning mea culpa. When you’re talking about this quantum of money,” Mr. Sokolow said. “It’s an admission of liability. An admission that there were hundreds of cases where the university had knowledge or without much diligence could have known what was going on, and failed to put an end to it.”
Personally, this voice was interesting because it reiterated what survivor Brennan Heil felt when she said that USC finally admitted that they “did something wrong.” This recognition of wrongdoing is important because USC covered up knowing about Tyndall’s abusive behavior for many years.
Overall, all three articles mentioned USC President Carol Folt, John C. Manly on behalf of the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Counsel, and General Counsel Beong-Soo Ki. It is important to look at the sourcing for all of the pieces and to consider when they were published.
Although the Annenberg Media article was one of the first to be published about the settlement (which earns you some clout in the journalism world), it is important for them to follow-up with another piece from the survivors. Without their voices, the story is just another court case.
As journalists, we have the responsibility to hold our own institution (USC) accountable. That being said, we must recognize the limitations to publishing a piece on deadline and to conduct follow-up reporting. In this circumstance, I hope to see a more human-centered piece released this week because Annenberg Media has the opportunity to hear and amplify voices from our own community.
Oh come on. I would expect this lazy reporting from UCLA or somewhere else, but not Annenberg. I would also mention that with this being such an important piece, there were undoubtably many people involved, if not professors and professionals as well. Someone would have had to bring this up in the process. If their reasoning is they didn’t want to bring up a harmful topic, that is very fair. But if there are hundreds of women coming forward you bet your butt there is one willing to speak on it. If they have been working on this for a while, chances are they could have put in the work to find someone, even if that meant reaching out to…
When I recieved emails from our princpal, I was a bit shocked at this. It's a completely tragedy and I feel deeply pain for those who suffered. I think it's the right way to straight things out.
At the same time, I was surprised that USC is rich. That was a big fee to pay.
I agree with Richard in the comment below that I hope this settlement will hopefully deter universities from standing idly by while things like this happen under their noses. It's crazy to think that this monster was able to harass and emotionally impact so many people before he was finally brought to justice. It's good to hear that USC is now doing what it can to rectify the situation. It's also very heartening to know that this lawsuit is finally over and hopefully closes this nightmarish chapter for many of the abused. Who can now move on knowing that USC has accepted responsibility and offered at least something for the part that they played in the trauma.
The unprecedented size of the settlement will hopefully act as a deterrent in the future and result with more vigilant supervision of employees. ABC News also reported: “The class-action settlement agreement also required USC to implement reforms to help prevent sexual and gender-based harassment. Those have included instituting a pre-hiring background check for all new personnel, including physicians, and revising its performance reviews for identifying and reporting improper sexual conduct, among other measures.”
While this may not act as a deterrent to individual bad actors, it could lead to more vigilant hiring practices as well as taking reports/claims/accusations more seriously.