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Top NPR Editor Placed on Leave, Accused of Sexual Harassment

Oct 31, 2017  •  Post A Comment

“NPR is investigating allegations by two women who said the head of its news department made unwanted physical contact with them while he was employed by another news organization nearly two decades ago,” The Washington Post reports. “The women, both journalists at the time of the alleged incidents, made the accusations in recent weeks against Michael Oreskes, senior vice president of news and editorial director at the Washington-based public broadcasting organization.”

The women reportedly spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. NPR confirmed today that it has placed Oreskes on indefinite leave, the paper reports.

“In separate complaints, the women said Oreskes — at the time, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times — abruptly kissed them while they were speaking with him about working at the newspaper. Both of them told similar stories: After meeting Oreskes and discussing their job prospects, they said he unexpectedly kissed them on the lips and stuck his tongue in their mouths,” the paper reports.

The alleged incidents reportedly took place in the late 1990s.

“Oreskes joined NPR in March 2015 after working at the Times and the Associated Press in senior editing roles,” the report notes.

5 Comments

  1. I fear this is turning into a witch hunt. Times were different 2 decades ago. If nothing has happened since then, Is it truly relevant today? When I was 20-something I did a few thinks while joking with friends that today could be seen in a different light. I’m not talking about true sexual harassment, just stupid thinks you do in your youth.

  2. Why doesn;t every woman that has been groped, touched in an inappropriate manner etc. come out and say so so we can get past this. We’ll be hearing about this for years.

    • Absolutely, and why doesn’t … or should I say “doesn;t” … every terrorist with a rental truck, backpack bomb or automatic weapons just come out and kill whoever it is they’re gonna kill so we can get past this whole terrorism thing … or else we’ll be hearing about that for years too. Because what matters to me is my having to hear about shit, not the shit itself.

    • Wow Howard, did you actually read and think about what you were saying before you pushed the send button? While I agree that some of the stories that are decades old and were a one time event are probably just that, a one time event, you cannot lumped every story into a single column and treat them all the same. There is a huge difference between making a single mistake and a long term pattern of abuse.

  3. The only way these pigs can be stopped is by women having the courage to step up and point out the harassers. If these men are not reported, then they can continue to harass women. If your daughter was harassed by one of these men because a woman didn’t report it, because people are getting tired of hearing about this, would you be as concerned about the noise? The noise is critical to allow women to be more comfortable reporting. But more important, it forces the HR people and supervisors to step up and take action. The stories coming out often tell that these women reported the harassment to HR departments and supervisors,, but no action was taken. Only this continual noise will force a change throughout the entire system that is allowing it to continue. It is much harder to ignore or turn your back on a complaint if you know that your failure to act will also be reported in the noise.

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