I've tried really hard, but I really can't understand the left-right narrative in SH at ALL. Let me reconstruct what I think is the argument.
1. Lefties, liberals, feminists and anti-nationals are generally very vocal about SH and women's rights.
2. To a large part, excepting the Trumps, Kavanaughs, etc, #MeToo accused have in recent years come from so-called liberal or left-leaning professions, like media and entertainment, maybe because the women (and supposedly the men) in those professions are more liberal, feminist or empowered? There's been Pachauri and Tejpal. Now 'exonerated' Farooki. Justice Ashok Ganguly was fairly left of centre. And Raya Sarkar list was full of left-ish professors.
3. The majority of men named, get some flack on social and traditional media, and also offline, including by liberals, from what I can tell. And in some cases, like Pachauri and Tejpal, the legal process actually takes place and takes years (in India). But in most cases the survivors don't necessarily choose to make legal complaints, and sometimes the social pressure and speaking out is where it ends. Sometimes, employers or institutions start their own inquiries. And sometimes, nothing happens.
4. None of that so far, really has to do with left or right-wing, although it seems like many more 'lefty' men are getting outed than right-wingers.
As for single instances of Nivedita Menon defending Liang, for example, that is not necessarily an issue of left vs right. Her and others defending Liang, may be an anomaly vis-a-vis the usual 'leftish' discourse that all victims should be believed, but I would assume it's ultimately about someone coming to the aid of their long-time friend after having heard their side of the story and giving them a benefit of the doubt. It's maybe a tad hypocritical, but I would assume that's a personal decision more than not a political one (though I don't know about that exact case, of course).
Likewise, arch-liberals Tejpal and Pachauri have had friends and defenders and lawyers, who have stood up for them, as have Ashok Ganguly, and Swatanter Kumar. But they've also been fought hard against by 'liberals' or feminists.
Nothing of that really has to do with political leanings, but I assume more with the fact that accused men will be able to muster some support. And in some cases, some of the men may even be innocent, or may have a compelling counter-narratives or evidence that close friends of decades may choose to believe.
For instance, if you're a feminist and your husband or best friend is accused of #metoo, are you suggesting that the feminism must always trump their personal relationship? And if it doesn't, and they publicly support their husband or best friend, or forgive them, that they are not allowed to complain about any SH ever again?
#metoo is fairly complicated. But, just like gender, it really cuts across all political lines, and will also involve more complex social and personal dynamics for many of the people involved.
I haven't read the latest edits to the story, but in an early version, at least, they had acknowledged LI in the very last paragraph of the story.
Quote:
While it remains to be seen what action the administration will take against the alleged harassers, the male students of the University have already felt the repercussions as a result of their peer’s actions. As first reported by Legally India, The Debating Society at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi has barred male participants from NLU Delhi for the 71st Mukarji Memorial Debate 2019, and the 7th ProAm Debate 2019.
I believe they did quote extensively from the posts in the first version they published, but must have removed these after. Their website is currently down, I can't check though.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, but those statistics are definitely completely made up.
It takes a lot of courage in this world for a woman to stand up and make an allegation, and just going by common sense and by the law, our presumption without evidence to the contrary should be to believe such accounts. In the overwhelming majority of cases, going public about SH is very traumatic and there are really only very few reasons that a woman might risk going through with that.
The time period involved is not relevant either.
However, I agree with you that the legal and other established processes must also work in parallel to social media campaigns, etc, particularly if the women wish to pursue it further. But those are also two independent things of each other: naming a harasser is about more than just the law, and is also about women exercising their right to free speech in talking about crimes or unacceptable behaviour.
I appreciate your thoughtful explanation of the position, and agree that in retrospect things should have gone differently. I think the intersection of social media, SH, privacy and journalism are an evolving area with their own unique challenges, and we have learned from the experience.
Also, since your post, we have taken consent regarding any of the more detailed paraphrasing included in the FB posts.
Agree, I think there was some disconnect in the perceptions. We treated these Facebook posts, due to the 'public' privacy settings and the fact that they had been up for many days and had clearly travelled outside of just a small group of friends, equivalent to open letters that were intended to be seen more widely.
But I agree there had been some miscommunication and crossed wires in our communications with the posters, and in hindsight, this could have gone differently and we have also taken some valuable lessons from reporting on this and the specific sensitivities involved in social media and SH specifically.
I don't think that's necessarily accurate, and by that metric, the ET or Mint shouldn't have a leg to stand on when covering sexual harassment in industry, and Filmfare or Mumbai Mirror shouldn't write about SH in Bollywood (although they probably don't).
LI has been reporting on sex harassment at least since 2010, way before #MeToo had become 'fashionable' for media to report on, and have written at least 130 articles about SH in some form or other: https://www.legallyindia.com/tag/sexual%20harassment
So yes, I understand that this is a sensitive issue, but partly it is also the media's role to ensure such debates are public and don't just happen in hushed tones, while also documenting the power of social media.
We appreciate and understand people's viewpoints on this.
I think one concern is that initially most of the calls were for LI to take down the entire story. Respecting the right for survivors' agency, nevertheless, once a story becomes institutional it is newsworthy and important for it to be covered. Not everyone may agree with this decision, but in our opinion not covering what has happened at that point is not defensible either, and boils down to censorship of media and effectively media being complicit in covering it up.
People may feel they have full control on a platform like Facebook, but it's not like Facebook doesn't have a profit motive or protects people's privacy adequately. Indeed, if the original FB posts had been intended purely for private consumption, the issue would never have taken on a life of its own and the debate would not have started with offline consequences.
To say that in SH cases, media absolutely can not report on it after public statements have been made and once there are real-world reactions, basically leaves very little room and purpose for journalism and reporting on SH, and relegates SH purely to social media platforms, which seems counter-intuitive.
However, I agree that in this case, there may have been a disconnect between our understanding and for how public / private the original FB posters intended their posts to be.
Once explained that situation, we have made edits to this article that I think have struck the correct balance between giving sufficient background to the story, which is important for readers and other survivors to be aware of and which puts the institutional reaction into context, while also aiming to respect the privacy of people and the updated Facebook permissions.
Hi, I appreciate your feedback and have made some edits, further condensing the summaries of the Facebook posts. I think it's important in such stories to also provide an insight into the events and context on social media, such as the St Stephens posts and the #MeToo posts that originally set it all off, and at the same time also encourage other NLUs to talk about this more openly.
I think it's also worth asking whether Facebook can ever be an entirely 'private' sphere anymore. Can a person really control the content in a meaningful way? Once it's on Facebook, it's available forever, with viral and controversial posts such as these travelling as screenshots via WhatsApp and so on.
Interesting regarding takedown of social media posts, and that's a valid point, though I don't think it's necessarily a black and white situation either.
For instance, if one of the complaints had been made on Blogger or Tumblr or Wordpress or Instagram for instance, would it then have been legitimate for media to base a story on those posts? If not, is there any point at which it would be, if the original poster never gives explicit consent?
Sure, SH is a special case, but nevertheless, it is arguable that consent is implicit as soon as you post on one of these platforms, including on Facebook, especially once it's gone viral.
Regarding negative consent, we had asked for permission to re-post the entire post, not to report on the substance of the allegations (providing those allegations were indeed made publicly).
Once Stephens posted about it and Ranbir Singh commented on it and sent an email out internally, the story itself was bigger than the original FB posts, which arguably became part of the public record.
That said, I appreciate that our decision to republish was not necessarily a clear-cut call to make in this instance.
A brief update. We understand and maybe underestimated how controversially this article could be perceived, with respect to the consent of the original Facebook posters.
Notably, I believe one problem people have with our article is the idea that survivors should be able to be in control of their own narrative, by choosing where and how their accounts get published and re-published.
I fundamentally agree with that.
But I think in this case, part of the disagreement stemmed from a lack of clear common definitions and agreements about where private ends and starts with things such as posts on Facebook, and the original intention behind publishing them.
I don't think there's necessarily a 100% right or wrong answer that applies all the time here, but on a balance and without being able to turn back time, I don't think anything would be served by us removing the article at this point.
Neither me nor Prachi were friends with any of the authors on FB but were able to see the posts. As far as I know, the only settings when posting to FB are either 'public' or 'friends', or 'friends except XYZ'.
As far as I know, if person A's post is shared by person B, it doesn't become visible to non-friends on person A's profile (as it was in this case).
1. We are definitely not removing or unpublishing the entire post.
2. We reached out to one of the authors of a post asking whether we could repost the entire post. Quoting selectively from public Facebook posts that have pretty much gone viral, is definitely fair use.
3. We are currently talking to several people about the quotes and will take a call on this shortly.
Regarding the comments that we shouldn't be quoting from the accounts of students, I empathise, but I think they are misplaced.
These posts were made on Facebook and explicitly set to 'public' visibility, meaning that they were public statements made, just like Tweets on Twitter or Instagram posts or other social media posts, which are regularly quoted by media. We have not mentioned any of the names of the individuals involved and endeavoured to keep out identifying details.
But I think it is important that SH gets covered and gets wider attention across law schools, and women coming forward with their experiences and those experiences getting covered by media is an important part of that process, both for other survivors of sexual harassment and for potential perpetrators too, who may learn how to behave better from such accounts.
Thanks 571, have taken your feedback on board. The bar was certainly fun and interesting to cover, but reader interest was limited compared to law firm stories and doing good bar reporting was quite labour intensive.
But will see what we can do in limited areas though...
Presumably the key question is whether CAM knew that Modi was (allegedly) using the law firm as a front to hide documents. If they accepted the documents in good faith on the basis of their instruction, then they wouldn't be in any trouble.
However, this wouldn't mean that Modi wouldn't eventually try to argue that privilege applies anyway, since the law in this area is rather vague...
Haha, such conspiracy theorists :) What's in this article is pretty much all I know that can be confirmed and that's relevant, unless you'd prefer for me to share gossip and conjecture?
Nice try, but I fear you may not have read the article? :)
But that's ok... While I don't doubt CAM is powerful and has powerful friends, from what is known so far, the situation is probably more nuanced than what you're imagining...
Thanks for sharing. We don't generally cover the bar much anymore, unless we can do something exclusive or something beyond just court reporting. Will take a look at Bombay sols and keep you posted.
I'd love to report more associate moves actually (like on a weekly or monthly basis, doing a couple of firms at once), but in reality it's pretty hard to get details on enough moves consistently.
Yes, I think it's interesting - a similar seniority move at law firm level we would have reported, and this is a pretty big company and for finance lawyers it may be interesting.
Yes, generally we do, though I disagree with your categorisation. Irrespective of the true nature of many law firm partnership structures, by implying that salaried partners are inconsequential, then we probably shouldn't report on when someone is promoted to or hired as salaried partner either?
Also, one of the things that makes the Indian legal market different from many of the more established markets, is the wealth of start-ups in the legal space, and LI has reported on these right from its inception. After all, today's start-up may be tomorrow's up-and-coming firm (or an aqui-hire for one of the big firms)...
Since CAM is trying to crack Delhi, and a strong litigation practice being key to Delhi (which SAM has), this is quite an interesting move worth reporting I think.
And in any case, we report salaried partner hires at all firms...
Not sure if this was maybe clear enough, but the idea of 'coming of age' in the headline is intended to apply in respect of Indian law journals (and therefore, domestic academia).
I'd assume Kesavananda wouldn't have cited any homegrown law journals.
In respect of privacy or euthanasia that might have included a few domestic journals, but I don't think it's as many as this one - will see if can dig out the full list from some of Chandrachud's judgments...
But seriously, while we are very happy about the 377 judgment and have written extensively about it in the past, we have taken a strategic decision to do mostly exclusive stories and not those that you'd have to have been hiding under a rock under to miss.
As for the stories that every single newspaper will be leading with on their frontpages and that will be shouted about all day in wall-to-wall TV coverage, we don't generally cover these unless there's some genuine value or novel viewpoint we can add with our coverage.
Anecdotally, having spoken to a lot of leaving partners in my time, out of the top 20, probably the majority, except for maybe firms like JSA or Trilegal, maybe AZB? And even if the firms don't actually end up causing such problems, many leaving partners fear such problems, which is why lots will say they are 'considering options' rather than joining a rival, until the money is in the bank.
The press release actually came from Rajaram, as was mentioned in the story :)
But in any case, I think in general scoffing at deal sizes is a bit ridiculous. Even a $2.5m VC investment could end up being pretty important for law firms if the client becomes a huge company down the line or if Colgate-Palmolive does regular deals in India.
Plus, it's not like a $2.5m deal doesn't need documentation and all the other trappings (even if fees are maybe a bit lower).
Have now published but moderated the name. In my experience, however much it may be genuine appreciation, it usually ends up being embarrassing to the individual involved for not having been promoted (for whatever reason). Plus it's very hard to filter whether it's genuine appreciation or trolling...
Thanks, have now covered - it's locked for subscribers only for the next few hours, but should be live by tomorrow morning :) If you privately message me, will be happy to share.
No, sadly - at NLU J it was a Student Representative, as far as I understand. NLU Delhi also doesn't have an SBA, and NLIU is still waiting for its official SBA...
It might not always seem that way, but everyone has friends and supporters. :)
And that's part of the idea of having an open comments section on LI: that different viewpoints are expressed, rather than just having an amplified echo-chamber of the views of one's friends and other people one agrees with, as on Facebook for instance.
Lol, how much who paid? Also, what relationship? As far as I can recall, I have literally never had a conversation with Prof Singh, other than one set of Whatsapp messages exchanged yesterday :)
1. Lefties, liberals, feminists and anti-nationals are generally very vocal about SH and women's rights.
2. To a large part, excepting the Trumps, Kavanaughs, etc, #MeToo accused have in recent years come from so-called liberal or left-leaning professions, like media and entertainment, maybe because the women (and supposedly the men) in those professions are more liberal, feminist or empowered? There's been Pachauri and Tejpal. Now 'exonerated' Farooki. Justice Ashok Ganguly was fairly left of centre. And Raya Sarkar list was full of left-ish professors.
3. The majority of men named, get some flack on social and traditional media, and also offline, including by liberals, from what I can tell. And in some cases, like Pachauri and Tejpal, the legal process actually takes place and takes years (in India). But in most cases the survivors don't necessarily choose to make legal complaints, and sometimes the social pressure and speaking out is where it ends. Sometimes, employers or institutions start their own inquiries. And sometimes, nothing happens.
4. None of that so far, really has to do with left or right-wing, although it seems like many more 'lefty' men are getting outed than right-wingers.
As for single instances of Nivedita Menon defending Liang, for example, that is not necessarily an issue of left vs right. Her and others defending Liang, may be an anomaly vis-a-vis the usual 'leftish' discourse that all victims should be believed, but I would assume it's ultimately about someone coming to the aid of their long-time friend after having heard their side of the story and giving them a benefit of the doubt. It's maybe a tad hypocritical, but I would assume that's a personal decision more than not a political one (though I don't know about that exact case, of course).
Likewise, arch-liberals Tejpal and Pachauri have had friends and defenders and lawyers, who have stood up for them, as have Ashok Ganguly, and Swatanter Kumar. But they've also been fought hard against by 'liberals' or feminists.
Nothing of that really has to do with political leanings, but I assume more with the fact that accused men will be able to muster some support. And in some cases, some of the men may even be innocent, or may have a compelling counter-narratives or evidence that close friends of decades may choose to believe.
For instance, if you're a feminist and your husband or best friend is accused of #metoo, are you suggesting that the feminism must always trump their personal relationship? And if it doesn't, and they publicly support their husband or best friend, or forgive them, that they are not allowed to complain about any SH ever again?
#metoo is fairly complicated. But, just like gender, it really cuts across all political lines, and will also involve more complex social and personal dynamics for many of the people involved.
Quote:
It takes a lot of courage in this world for a woman to stand up and make an allegation, and just going by common sense and by the law, our presumption without evidence to the contrary should be to believe such accounts. In the overwhelming majority of cases, going public about SH is very traumatic and there are really only very few reasons that a woman might risk going through with that.
The time period involved is not relevant either.
However, I agree with you that the legal and other established processes must also work in parallel to social media campaigns, etc, particularly if the women wish to pursue it further. But those are also two independent things of each other: naming a harasser is about more than just the law, and is also about women exercising their right to free speech in talking about crimes or unacceptable behaviour.
Also, since your post, we have taken consent regarding any of the more detailed paraphrasing included in the FB posts.
But I agree there had been some miscommunication and crossed wires in our communications with the posters, and in hindsight, this could have gone differently and we have also taken some valuable lessons from reporting on this and the specific sensitivities involved in social media and SH specifically.
LI has been reporting on sex harassment at least since 2010, way before #MeToo had become 'fashionable' for media to report on, and have written at least 130 articles about SH in some form or other: https://www.legallyindia.com/tag/sexual%20harassment
We have been first to push hard in cases such as Supreme Court sexual harassment re justices Ashok Ganguly and Swatanter Kumar, and have generally tried to also raise awareness of the issues at colleges (as partly linked to at the bottom of the article) and also in the wider legal profession and society: https://www.legallyindia.com/analysis/the-rapid-rehabilitation-of-powerful-men-of-rk-pachauri-ak-ganguly-swatanter-kumar-tarun-tejpal-and-the-length-of-memories-20160330-7369
So yes, I understand that this is a sensitive issue, but partly it is also the media's role to ensure such debates are public and don't just happen in hushed tones, while also documenting the power of social media.
I think one concern is that initially most of the calls were for LI to take down the entire story. Respecting the right for survivors' agency, nevertheless, once a story becomes institutional it is newsworthy and important for it to be covered. Not everyone may agree with this decision, but in our opinion not covering what has happened at that point is not defensible either, and boils down to censorship of media and effectively media being complicit in covering it up.
People may feel they have full control on a platform like Facebook, but it's not like Facebook doesn't have a profit motive or protects people's privacy adequately. Indeed, if the original FB posts had been intended purely for private consumption, the issue would never have taken on a life of its own and the debate would not have started with offline consequences.
To say that in SH cases, media absolutely can not report on it after public statements have been made and once there are real-world reactions, basically leaves very little room and purpose for journalism and reporting on SH, and relegates SH purely to social media platforms, which seems counter-intuitive.
However, I agree that in this case, there may have been a disconnect between our understanding and for how public / private the original FB posters intended their posts to be.
Once explained that situation, we have made edits to this article that I think have struck the correct balance between giving sufficient background to the story, which is important for readers and other survivors to be aware of and which puts the institutional reaction into context, while also aiming to respect the privacy of people and the updated Facebook permissions.
I think it's also worth asking whether Facebook can ever be an entirely 'private' sphere anymore. Can a person really control the content in a meaningful way? Once it's on Facebook, it's available forever, with viral and controversial posts such as these travelling as screenshots via WhatsApp and so on.
For instance, if one of the complaints had been made on Blogger or Tumblr or Wordpress or Instagram for instance, would it then have been legitimate for media to base a story on those posts? If not, is there any point at which it would be, if the original poster never gives explicit consent?
Sure, SH is a special case, but nevertheless, it is arguable that consent is implicit as soon as you post on one of these platforms, including on Facebook, especially once it's gone viral.
Regarding negative consent, we had asked for permission to re-post the entire post, not to report on the substance of the allegations (providing those allegations were indeed made publicly).
Once Stephens posted about it and Ranbir Singh commented on it and sent an email out internally, the story itself was bigger than the original FB posts, which arguably became part of the public record.
That said, I appreciate that our decision to republish was not necessarily a clear-cut call to make in this instance.
Notably, I believe one problem people have with our article is the idea that survivors should be able to be in control of their own narrative, by choosing where and how their accounts get published and re-published.
I fundamentally agree with that.
But I think in this case, part of the disagreement stemmed from a lack of clear common definitions and agreements about where private ends and starts with things such as posts on Facebook, and the original intention behind publishing them.
I don't think there's necessarily a 100% right or wrong answer that applies all the time here, but on a balance and without being able to turn back time, I don't think anything would be served by us removing the article at this point.
As far as I know, if person A's post is shared by person B, it doesn't become visible to non-friends on person A's profile (as it was in this case).
1. We are definitely not removing or unpublishing the entire post.
2. We reached out to one of the authors of a post asking whether we could repost the entire post. Quoting selectively from public Facebook posts that have pretty much gone viral, is definitely fair use.
3. We are currently talking to several people about the quotes and will take a call on this shortly.
These posts were made on Facebook and explicitly set to 'public' visibility, meaning that they were public statements made, just like Tweets on Twitter or Instagram posts or other social media posts, which are regularly quoted by media. We have not mentioned any of the names of the individuals involved and endeavoured to keep out identifying details.
But I think it is important that SH gets covered and gets wider attention across law schools, and women coming forward with their experiences and those experiences getting covered by media is an important part of that process, both for other survivors of sexual harassment and for potential perpetrators too, who may learn how to behave better from such accounts.
But will see what we can do in limited areas though...
Quote: via http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=S#spokesman.2C_spokeswoman
However, this wouldn't mean that Modi wouldn't eventually try to argue that privilege applies anyway, since the law in this area is rather vague...
But that's ok... While I don't doubt CAM is powerful and has powerful friends, from what is known so far, the situation is probably more nuanced than what you're imagining...
It continues to be an interesting story, but in my opinion, Reuters overplayed its scoop slightly...
Also, one of the things that makes the Indian legal market different from many of the more established markets, is the wealth of start-ups in the legal space, and LI has reported on these right from its inception. After all, today's start-up may be tomorrow's up-and-coming firm (or an aqui-hire for one of the big firms)...
And in any case, we report salaried partner hires at all firms...
I'd assume Kesavananda wouldn't have cited any homegrown law journals.
In respect of privacy or euthanasia that might have included a few domestic journals, but I don't think it's as many as this one - will see if can dig out the full list from some of Chandrachud's judgments...
But seriously, while we are very happy about the 377 judgment and have written extensively about it in the past, we have taken a strategic decision to do mostly exclusive stories and not those that you'd have to have been hiding under a rock under to miss.
As for the stories that every single newspaper will be leading with on their frontpages and that will be shouted about all day in wall-to-wall TV coverage, we don't generally cover these unless there's some genuine value or novel viewpoint we can add with our coverage.
But in any case, I think in general scoffing at deal sizes is a bit ridiculous. Even a $2.5m VC investment could end up being pretty important for law firms if the client becomes a huge company down the line or if Colgate-Palmolive does regular deals in India.
Plus, it's not like a $2.5m deal doesn't need documentation and all the other trappings (even if fees are maybe a bit lower).
Thanks for pointing out... :)
And that's part of the idea of having an open comments section on LI: that different viewpoints are expressed, rather than just having an amplified echo-chamber of the views of one's friends and other people one agrees with, as on Facebook for instance.