Journalist Bob Woodward was reportedly booed on Wednesday during a discussion with two female reporters while interviewing them about their new book on Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.
Reports said Woodward was asking New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey about their book, She Said, when attendees began heckling him and walking out of the Sixth and I synagogue in Washington, DC, where the event took place.
“All I did was praise the book as a real handbook to investigative reporting and actually a masterpiece, and I asked questions about it,” Woodward told the New York Post.
Audience members said they were shocked at how the 76-year-old associate editor of the Washington Post moderated the discussion, and said that at one point someone in the crowd yelled, “Let them finish” after Woodward reportedly interrupted the two authors.
“It was an example of well-intentioned questions from someone everyone respects, but without any forethought to the nuances and complexities surrounding the dynamics that allowed what their reporting uncovered to persist in the first place,” said attendee Anna Kain.
“It was almost like it was just this collective awful experience that we were all suffering through while also trying to listen to the really intelligent and knowledgeable things that Kantor and Twohey were saying,” she continued. “The whole thing was incredibly uncomfortable.”
Twitter users also accused Woodward of failing to understand the so-called “rape culture,” and were “disgusted” when he asked the authors why they believed Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story of the alleged assault despite her inability to recall the event clearly.
Kara Swisher, a technology journalist and podcast host who attended the event, tweeted that Woodward was “blowing” the interview, and said the crowd did not like how the conversation went:
Ouch @realBobWoodward is blowing this interview with @mega2e and @jodikantor on their book “She Said.” Interruptive, not focused on the women who were victimized by Harvey Weinstein and weirdly obsessed with that creep, it’s a exercise in how not to interview. The crowd no like. pic.twitter.com/sEvEZPOlmG
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) October 3, 2019
However, Kantor and Twohey wrote in an email to the DCist that they were grateful for all the moderators during their book tour who had agreed to join them onstage.
“We welcome all questions, from them and especially from the audience, because each one is an opportunity to relate the wrenching decisions that many of our sources had to make and grapple with #MeToo as an example and test of social change in our time,” the authors concluded.
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