The editor-in-chief of Hollywood news site The Wrap apologized Sunday for offending readers with a blog post that painted women accusing actor Bill Cosby of rape as fame-seeking opportunists.
The original blog post, penned by frequent contributor Richard Stellar and titled “The Rape of Bill Cosby,” sought to skewer the media’s coverage of the recent resurgence of rape accusations against the iconic actor. But in doing so, Stellar accused the women who’ve come forward to say Cosby sexually assaulted them of “deceit, selective memory and blind ambition.”
The Wrap’s CEO and editor-in-chief, Sharon Waxman, pointed out that this paragraph in particular incensed readers:
“The concept of justice is disregarded. The statute of limitations is ignored. The recollections of events that happened as long as fifty years ago are dredged up by aging actresses who have one eye on the CNN camera, and the other on a book or reality show deal. If the statute of limitations was as long as the 15 minutes of fame that these lost souls are trying to recapture, then our prisons would be as vacant as the Holiday Inn in Acapulco (you probably have no idea what that means because you’re not used to real news). Thankfully, the statute of limitations was written to avoid exactly what this blog is about. There is no legitimacy to justice if there is no real evidence, and evidence has a way of vanishing as memories dim with the marching of time. A DNA swab on most of Cosby’s detractors if done today would most likely come up exceedingly dry.”
“I’m not saying that what these woman claim happened, didn’t happen,” Stellar also wrote. But he then argued that “once those women realized the violation that they endured at the hands of Cosby, then they should have reported it then — not a generation later.”
Waxman distanced the site from Stellar’s piece by clarifying that Stellar’s blog posts, like those of other independent contributors to the site, aren’t edited with the same rigor applied to staff writers’ work. But she argued that Stellar’s contrarian view “should never disqualify someone from a community forum.”
“On the other hand, an opinion piece with a contrarian view can provoke, but it should not offend,” she wrote. “Clearly it has done so, and for that I apologize. That was not intentional.”
Waxman changed the title of Stellar’s piece to “In Defense of Bill Cosby (Guest Opinion Blog).”
Stellar appended his own mea culpa to the top of the piece on Sunday. Though he wrote that his piece was “misconstrued as defending Bill Cosby,” Stellar admitted that the backlash to his piece was not unwarranted.
“Clearly, the women who have come forward now, do so more out of frustration with the legal system than, as I described, their desire to fix one eye on a CNN camera, and the other on a reality show contract,” he wrote. “That was not only mean, but incendiary to anyone who has experienced that sort of abuse.”
I’m done with this whole story. There’s no way to try to take a rational, reasonable position that doesn’t throw people on one side or the other or both into a terrific hissy fit.
Yes, one should base all their decisions on whether or not it will upset one group or another. Democrats have been doing that for years.
Cosby’s lawyer asked why these people didn’t come forward decades ago when the incidents happened. Attacks like this had a lot to do with the decisions these women made. Of course we’ve come a long way in the last 4 decades, right?
I understand wanting to be unbiased and hear all sides.
What I don’t understand is the comment from the article “A DNA swab on most of Cosby’s detractors if done today would most likely come up exceedingly dry.” Um, screw this guy.
I also have an issue with, as the author states, that IF the events occurred the victims were the ones who failed because it was their responsibility to make a timely report. 2 of the supposed victims did.
This guy was all about “blaming the media”. Maybe he should have just kept it about ethics in jounalism. /snark off
Criticism of media, my ass.
That guy wasn’t trying to be “fair” in his treatment of this story – he was being an obviously biased, hateful a-hole about it.
Well, at least the editor gave him a public spanking for it.