Last week, former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi wrote a personal essay in the New York Review of Books called “Reflections From a Hashtag.” Back in 2014, Ghomeshi lost his job due to allegations that he had sexual assaulted multiple women, and the essay purports to detail the loneliness and introspection he underwent as he lost his reputation and status. A week before Ghomeshi's piece was published, former host of WNYC and PRI's The Takeaway John Hockenberry wrote an essay in Harper's about his own experience with #MeToo allegations. Both pieces garnered significant criticism for their authors' failures to reckon with the gravity and consequences of the accusations against them.
Slate critic Laura Miller wrote a response titled “Among All the Other Problems With Jian Ghomeshi’s NYRB Piece, It’s a Terrible Personal Essay,” in which she calls Ghomeshi’s piece a “frustrating exercise in bland soul-searching, misdirection, and hand-waving.” She and Brooke discuss the shortcomings of the two articles, and why a personal essay might be unfit for the task of getting the other side of a #MeToo story.
*CORRECTION: In this interview, Brooke says that John Hockenberry's contract was not renewed "and it was later that these complaints against him were investigated." WNYC objects to this characterization of events and provided the following statement:
"WNYC investigated and took action on every allegation we were aware of when John Hockenberry was host of The Takeaway. In June 2017, WNYC and PRI, co-producers of The Takeaway, did not renew his contract. When additional allegations were brought to our attention after he left, those were investigated as well."
This segment is from our September 21st, 2018 episode, Make Amends.