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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Wed Nov 15, 2017, 12:12 PM Nov 2017

EXCLUSIVE 'Unsafe and Just Plain Dirty': Women Accuse Vice of 'Toxic' Sexual-Harassment Culture

Source: The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast talked to more than a dozen former and current employees about the culture for women inside Vice Media. They spoke of harassing behavior and company indifference.

BRANDY ZADROZNY
11.15.17 9:30 AM ET

In the summer of 2015, Phoebe Barghouty was 23 years old and had a new master’s degree in journalism from Stanford—but little other experience—when she landed what most of her peers would consider a dream job: associate producer at Vice’s Los Angeles bureau.

Though her job hadn’t technically started yet, her boss, then-Editor in Chief Jason Mojica, invited her to join the team at the L.A. Press Club Awards. After accepting an award for public service in journalism, the team from Vice—including Mojica and Kaj Larsen, the bureau chief who had hired Barghouty—celebrated with drinks. By the end of the night, Barghouty says a very drunk Larsen had brought up sex (musing about his chances with a group of “black girls” at the bar), asked her for a ride home, then passed out in her car.

“I had not even started work and he was being so inappropriate,” she remembers. Things just got weirder.

Barghouty says within her first few weeks on the job, Larsen was asking her to meet him at his home in Venice Beach. She thought it was strange, but he was her boss so she complied. As she waited outside his house, she texted a friend her location—“like how you tell a friend before a Tinder date in case you get murdered”—when a shirtless Larsen walked up and told her to come wait inside his bungalow while he took a shower.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/unsafe-and-just-plain-dirty-women-accuse-vice-of-toxic-sexual-harassment-culture

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EXCLUSIVE 'Unsafe and Just Plain Dirty': Women Accuse Vice of 'Toxic' Sexual-Harassment Culture (Original Post) DonViejo Nov 2017 OP
gosh darn it i like Vice Channel... samnsara Nov 2017 #1
Me too, Saviolo Nov 2017 #2
Dang..and I've been liking Vice a lot more lately SpankMe Nov 2017 #3
The name alone always put me off frazzled Nov 2017 #4
It is funny you say that... SkyDaddy7 Nov 2017 #8
I did not know frazzled Nov 2017 #9
Damn it IronLionZion Nov 2017 #5
Of course it is. eom Control-Z Nov 2017 #6
It's been going on for years and it's disgusting. thecrow Nov 2017 #10
OFFS! Marie Marie Nov 2017 #7

Saviolo

(3,269 posts)
2. Me too,
Wed Nov 15, 2017, 12:46 PM
Nov 2017

I was even involved in a short documentary video they did. Though I dealt almost entirely with the VICE Canada team, so I don't know if the culture in this office is different. Both the writer and the producer/director I worked with were women, too.

SpankMe

(2,937 posts)
3. Dang..and I've been liking Vice a lot more lately
Wed Nov 15, 2017, 01:01 PM
Nov 2017

They've had some good, progressive journalism recently, and I figured this was a good, edgier addition to my other sources of scholarly journalism. I hope they can fix this and refine their mission.

I knew someone who worked for a major porn video production company. They also had a "non-conventional workplace" contract for workers to sign. That was because employees would regularly encounter porn film and imagery in the course of their jobs and a few had to actually perform in the videos. But, he said it was the safest lease sexual harassing place he's ever worked at! They still enforced all rules on sexual harassment, bullying, equal pay and treatment, anti-retaliation and inappropriate jokes and behavior. The only place that naked imagery was even allowed was in production areas, certain offices and layout/editing rooms and the like. It was banned in all office areas and areas accessible to the public. He said it was less intimidating than working at a bank!

You can have a non-conventional work place and still preserve all semblance of a non-harassing work place. The point of non-conventional workplace characterization is the content you're exposed to - not how you're treated.

frazzled

(18,402 posts)
4. The name alone always put me off
Wed Nov 15, 2017, 01:02 PM
Nov 2017

It sounds like one of those male-oriented girlie magazines (like Hustler) that get hidden behind the counter. I know you'll say "what's in a name?" or "a rose by any other color," but hey, we're so into messaging here, I thought I'd bring it up.

thecrow

(5,519 posts)
10. It's been going on for years and it's disgusting.
Thu Nov 16, 2017, 12:30 AM
Nov 2017

I once had my boss tell me that I didn't need a raise because "men took me out to dinner a lot"".
A truly disturbing thing that went on repeatedly was I would be asked to leave my work room
when one of the married bosses' girlfriends would come in my workplace to give him head.

There were many many more incidents over the years, and I can honestly say that every job I had over the years
had the comments, the innuendo, the "jokes" - all meant to make women uncomfortable and demeaned.
It's a power trip, plain and simple. It should not be in our workplaces.

I am so glad to be retired!

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