It’s been eight years since Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey posted The New York Times the investigation that would lead to the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, and the start of the Me Too movement. At that time, Donald Trump was starting his first term, the owners of social networks had not yet allowed the far right to roam freely without any verification filter for their hoaxes, and women found enough momentum to start the latest feminist wave. If this case had been published now, in 2025, would it have had the same impact? Kantor herself, on a visit to Barcelona, asks the question and is optimistic in her answer, but she knows that, despite Trump having returned as president of her country, things have changed a lot, even for journalism. “There is no consensus to save the truth,” he says.
“My newspaper is the same, we have more subscribers and other ways to reach the public,” said the journalist in her speech as guest of honor at the VII Congress of Journalists of Catalonia. “Women, even though it’s still difficult for them to speak up because the price to pay is high, I think they would do it again. We could also access those few sources that have provided us with vital and impactful information. I think the difference would be in how readers would receive this information,” she points out.
That is to say, if in 2017 the mountain of data that supported an investigation for which Kantor later won a Pulitzer was fundamental, it is possible that in 2025 not even an armor of papers and checks would save them from interrogation. “There was a factual consensus: we had the documents, the names of the women and very reliable sources. Then they only asked us things like why Weinstein was allowed to attack so many women for so long, why he wasn’t stopped, but there was never any doubt that what we published was true,” adds the journalist.
Weren’t the women’s words also questioned? “In our case they gave the names and those who initially didn’t want to, like the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, did so in a subsequent publication,” he recalls, and cites the constitutional guarantees of protection of sources in the United States, unlike Spain.
The other weak side that the investigative journalist, who for some years has dedicated to enlightening the public with her information on one of the most opaque institutions in the United States, the Supreme Court, finds is on social networks. «Journalism and networks no longer have such a comfortable relationship, I don’t know if Twitter now
Kantor recalls that the threats they suffered in 2017 not only materialized in the lawsuit filed against them by Weinstein, but also that the man known as the “King of Hollywood” took over a company with former military intelligence agents. If they had managed to prevent the publication of the investigation, the journalist recalls, they would have received 400,000 dollars. They did not collect the loot and their work was collected in a book, He said (published in Spain by Libros del KO), and the film of the same name, released in Spain under the title Discovery.
In 2025, this offensive would have been “cheaper” for the all-powerful manufacturer, in the journalist’s words, and would have spread “rapidly and massively” through fake profiles on social networks and artificial intelligence.
Trump’s war on the media
“I also don’t think there was cooperation between the media at that time like there was then with the Weinstein investigation,” he says. “The playing field is weaker, there are not so many forces trying to push journalism in this direction,” he describes the situation of the press in his country.
Trump’s second term brought with it an intense campaign against the press which, in the case of The New York Times, It resulted in a 15 billion dollar (12.82 billion euro) lawsuit for defamation and slander. A figure that far exceeded the market capitalization of perhaps the most influential newspaper in the world (almost 10 billion currently). He claims to have overthrown a judge last June, but it was, once again, a disciplinary wake-up call for mainstream media in the United States.
Kantor believes that “the truth is in danger”. “I don’t have all the answers to the monumental questions our profession poses. What is clear to me is that we care about business and the problem is bigger. We have no collective plan to save the truth.” Despite this, he tries to instill the same hope that, he says, he also transmits in the conversations with the students he holds in his country. “We must not give up on the most difficult issues; investigative journalists can send the message that the service we offer is to go beyond what is known”, he confides. “Progress for women, in fact, for anyone, depends on having good information and well-verified facts.”
