(This is a reprint, with updates, of a blog post I wrote in 2014 for the Center for a Stateless Society.)
On January 15, 2014, freelance sports blogger Caleb Hannan published a longform article at Grantland, a now-defunct sports and culture website, documenting his eight-month search for the truth behind Yar Golf’s “physics-defying” putter and its inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.
As Hannan progressed through his reporting, he discovered that Vanderbilt’s claims to hold certain academic credentials could not be verified. As he dug deeper, he heard from some of her former investors and uncovered court documents that suggested she might be a con artist. He also stumbled upon a facet of Vanderbilt’s life that should have been inconsequential and decided that it was “shocking enough” to focus at least part of his piece on it. See, according to the story, Vanderbilt was a trans woman.
Content warning on this piece for transphobia and suicide. Later, for mention of sexual assault.
Coming in at just under eight thousand words, on the surface Hannan’s piece is the stuff journalistic dreams are made of. It was perfect for Grantland, which in 2014 was part of a wave of disruptive, transgressive sites with a little bit more sheen on them than the Gawker brand (as an example) but which nevertheless was cut from the same cloth. Grantland had a partnership with ESPN but stood apart from it in content and demeanor. It was killed by budget cuts in 2015, over 17 months after Hannan’s piece appeared there.
Hannan’s story – golf club maker makes fantastical claims, leads intrepid reporter on a wild goose chase down dusty roads and into dusty filing rooms, following paper trails and ultimately unmasking who the real Dr. V was – has all the hallmarks not only of an instant longform classic, the kind of thing that will be taught in journalism schools forever, but of an HBO limited series, if not a full-length feature film.
But that’s not what happened. And instead of following proper journalistic ethics and backing off even if it meant losing the juiciness of the piece, a reporter wrote a story that ended with the death of his subject.
According to Hannan’s own accounting of events, Vanderbilt asked him from the beginning to “focus on the science,” and not on her. He agreed to this. As he investigated her claims and found that some of them didn’t pass the smell test, he was well within his rights to do more research. As a journalist he had an obligation to tell the truth given the context of his story. Where that obligation ended – in fact, where that obligation never even approached – was her gender identity.
In his essay, Hannan details at least one scenario where he discussed Vanderbilt’s gender with an investor of hers, and it becomes clear as the article progresses that he viewed her transition as another aspect of her con. Indeed, he casts her increasingly agitated email exchanges with him over the course of the reporting period as attempts to obfuscate his ability to tell the entire story. It probably didn’t occur to him that she didn’t want to discuss her gender or have her trans status publicized.
And yet, he did it. And it killed her. Vanderbilt committed suicide on October 18, 2013, almost exactly three months before the piece went to print. Hannan styled the final paragraphs of his essay as a “eulogy,” clicked “save” in his word processor, and sent it to his editors at Grantland, who had no problem publishing the final product.
This final product created a firestorm on the Internet.
Audrey Faye at Autostraddle highlighted Hannan’s flippant misgendering of Vanderbilt:
Hannan details Dr. V’s history of lawsuits, relationships and a suicide attempt. He describes outing her as trans to at least one investor without her consent, and without any acknowledgement of the fact that that’s what he was doing. And then, as the linchpin of the piece, he writes “What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into a tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself. Yet the biggest question remained unanswered: Had Dr. V created a great golf club or merely a great story?”
“A tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself.”
A troubled man.
Just like that, Hannan did what so many people do: he called into question the reality of Dr. V’s gender as if her being trans was as suspect as her missing degrees, engaging in the deplorable and time-honored practice of depicting trans* people, and especially trans women, as duplicitous and deceitful.
Melissa McEwan at Shakesville notes his separation from the human element in his story:
Hannan distances himself from this tragedy by including in the story the report of a previous attempt at taking her own life made by Dr. V, as if to suggest that her suicide was inevitable.
Further, he catalogs her deception about her educational and professional background alongside the revelation that she is trans, in a way that suggests her failure to reflexively disclose that she is trans as part of any introduction to a new person is a lie, just like so many others she told.
When she does not agree to become the focus of his story, which was meant to be about the science, he pouts and tasks her with the responsibility for his aggressive invasiveness: “Dr. V’s initial requests for privacy had seemed reasonable. Now, however, they felt like an attempt to stop me from writing about her or the company she’d founded. But why?” He reports disclosing that Dr. V is a trans woman to one of her investors. He publishes her birth name. He describes the scene of her death. And he concludes the piece by calling it a eulogy.
Grantland responded to the various criticisms with an apology letter from editor Bill Simmons and a response piece by ESPN.com baseball reporter Christina Kahrl. These responses were, in turn, criticized for 1. treating Vanderbilt’s death like they would treat a misspelling of a name, and 2. for continuing to treat Vanderbilt’s identity as part of her con game, respectively. Tim Marchman at Deadspin brought up how inappropriate the chronological nature of the article’s structure was; that, by writing the story in linear time, Hannan apparently felt he had to out Vanderbilt in order for everything else to make sense:
By writing the story chronologically, as a mystery where every revelation led to a further revelation, Hannan essentially locked himself into a structure where he had to reveal that Vanderbilt was a transgender woman to make sense of the blanks he’d found in her background. The chronological structure requires that to be the emotional pivot of the story, the moment when the story begins to open up for the author; the death is only a coda.
This is all the more troubling given that Grantland’s editor-in-chief, Bill Simmons, wrote that the story was filed in something approximating its present form before Vanderbilt killed herself in October. That suggests that in the process of writing, Hannan thought it would be acceptable to out Vanderbilt, by way of buttressing his claims about her background and thus casting doubt on the science behind her putter.
The response to Grantland’s attempted mea culpa was just as fierce on Twitter:
And people are really trying to spin this as “Good journalism violates boundaries.” I need a drink…so I can throw it at you!
— Shaadi (@tgirlinterruptd) January 21, 2014
spent the whole time explaining your journalism fails, totally missed how you failed as a human being @BillSimmons — Daniel José Older (@djolder) January 20, 2014
@sophiaphotos it almost reads like “growing pains”. No. A woman is dead. Her death is not “a mistake” that legitimizes your journalism. — Invincible Joy (@aisha1908) January 21, 2014
This woman’s ENTIRE LIFE is less important than this writer’s FIRST PIECE for Grantland. His career can be fixed. She can’t be brought back.
— GenderTerror.com (@Wolferfly) January 21, 2014
.@bodysnatcher226 @scATX It was terrible. Kahrl’s piece basically said Dr. V was at fault for being stealth. Victim blaming, bull.
— GenderTerror.com (@Wolferfly) January 20, 2014
Grandland laying into stealth trans people is a way to discredit trans people and frame stealth trans people as liars and frauds.
— Sophia Banks (@sophiaphotos) January 21, 2014
Of course, Hannan didn’t have to write the article according to the edicts of linear time, and he didn’t have to out Essay Anne Vanderbilt. And ethically, this shouldn’t have even been a question up for debate by either him or his editors.
On January 17, 2020, indie game developer and maker of the Electric Zine Maker Nathalie Lawhead made a post on their blog alleging that a prominent game journalist, Cecilia D’Anastasio, had treated them abusively in the process of reporting a story on their and another game industry worker’s incidents of sexual harassment and assault. The story was published at Kotaku, and both D’Anastasio and Kotaku Editor-in-Chief Stephen Totilo have issued statements defending the reporting after the fact.
Since January, 2020, Lawhead has taken to their twitter account basically every day demanding accountability from Kotaku. And since January, 2020, Kotaku has remained silent, the site’s final word sitting at the bottom of the original piece. It says, in part:
Kotaku reporters take very seriously the trust sources put in us and the bravery involved in coming forward about abuse. We stand by our reporting.
Since then, a former editorial team member, Natalie Degraffinried, left the site and posted a piece to Medium detailing why. One of the reasons, she said, was the handling of Lawhead’s situation.
A good chunk of the staff was horrified and didn’t feel comfortable with the site supporting Cecilia the way it did, if not because of their personal feelings about sexual assault then because they had experienced the exact sort of abrasive, careless behavior Lawhead detailed with regard to Cecilia in her story. For those of us trying to look into this and get things resolved the right way, we were met with an obtuse, bad-faith focus on Cecilia’s reporting acumen. As my own rage reached a fever pitch, a fellow editor continued to frame the issue as us “not liking” Cecilia rather than Cecilia being a person notorious at GMG for microaggressions and narcissistic behavior. I later found out from another former Kotaku employee that her issues with Cecilia had been framed in exactly the same way when she tried to voice concerns — a personal spat between women.
Lawhead has maintained for months that what D’Anastasio did was not ethical, and in fact led to more harm – not just on their part, but on the part of others.
Let’s go over what Lawhead is claiming.
The first phone call lasted for what felt like a long time. There was enough material to build something on. She thanked me and expressed that she would do her best to hold him accountable.
This was all civil and within the realm of rational interaction when talking about something this traumatic.Some time passed, and I got a second call from her asking if I was alone.
I went someplace quiet so I could talk.She told me that her article was ready to publish but that Kotaku’s lawyer needed me to go over the details of my sexual assault in order to get the go-ahead to publish.
She told me that in both my blog post, and in the first call with her, I skipped over the sexual assault.
In this phone call, what I shared with her was specifically under the premise that Kotaku’s lawyer needed this information in order to let her publish. She was being held up for legal reasons.
I really didn’t want to go over that, but she framed it in such a way that the article was being held up. I wanted for him to be held accountable so I agreed to go over that.
She also told me that this call was being recorded, after I agreed.For the sake of their lawyer, I tried my best to go over that night. It was really hard, and invasive.
I described what led up to that to the extent that I could manage to put into words but stopped short of saying “raped”.
She raised her voice and yelled, “Was it penetrative sex??”
I said “Yes”.I’m pretty sure you could probably hear a pin drop after that. I couldn’t really talk anymore.
The following is what is extremely upsetting about this, and why you should be careful when trusting this person…
I asked her if she would share this information. I was worried that she would.
She told me that she thought SHARING THE DETAILS OF A SEXUAL ASSAULT WAS EXPLOITATIVE and wrong (unnecessary, cruel…). She indicated that she would not do so. I didn’t want this out there. This was for their lawyer. That was the premise under which I shared this with her.She offered to run the story by me before publishing. I told her that I didn’t want to see it.
Four issues I take with this, assuming Lawhead is telling the truth and is acting in good faith:
- D’Anastasio conducts a lengthy interview with Lawhead. Lawhead purposely leaves out details of their sexual assault, as they have done consistently. At the time, D’Anastasio doesn’t push Lawhead for details.
- D’Anastasio calls back some time later and tells Lawhead that the story is being held up, and that Kotaku‘s lawyer needed to know the details of Lawhead’s assault.
- When Lawhead describes it, D’Anastasio pushes them to say whether the assault involved penetrative sex.
- Afterward, D’Anastasio tells Lawhead again that this was just for Kotaku’s lawyers. These details find their way into the public article later.
Grace Benfell, a fellow critic and journalist, put it better than I could in her thoughts on the matter:
Whether Lawhead actually said the details on or off the record is irrelevant. What matters is that they entrusted sensitive and traumatic information to D’Anastasio, believing that she would write a story that would warn others, highlight abuse in video game development, and provide evidence against Soule and other abusers. Instead, Lawhead was re-traumatized by the misuse of the information they gave. D’Anastasio wrote a highly salacious, gossipy article out the need for a good scoop. Lawhead’s account is a harrowing story of all kinds of institutional and personal forms of abuse, from casual misogyny and harassment to labor theft. Kotaku’s article highlights one “sensational” part, at the expense of Lawhead’s material needs and concerns. Of course, the relationship between journalism and its subjects is already fraught in capitalism. But D’Anastasio’s treatment of a sensitive story shows contemporary journalism’s most diabolical face. D’Anastasio sold Lawhead’s trauma for clout.
Just about every newsroom in the world abides by a code of ethics. Sometimes this is a set of loose guidelines, but usually, it’s written out clear as day and in neon. The Society of Professional Journalists, for instance, has incredibly clear rules regarding conduct and harm reduction. Caleb Hannan and Cecelia D’Anastasio should both know this. By the time the Dr. V post had been published, Hannan had been working as a professional journalist since at least 2010, when he won several SPJ awards for his reporting in Seattle Weekly; he has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Deadspin and others on a variety of subjects besides sports, so it’s hard to believe he’s green in this regard.
D’Anastasio has been a fact checker and reporter since August 2014, doing work for Rolling Stone, The Nation and VICE Media before moving over to Kotaku in June 2016. Like Hannan, she has been held in high regard in the past by some of her colleagues, and her work has won professional awards. Likewise, she absolutely understands how journalistic ethics is supposed to work.
Nonetheless, we need to talk about it.
Here’s what the SPJ has to say about harm reduction:
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
Journalists should: — Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
— Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
— Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
— Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
— Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.
When I first wrote this piece, I was overcome with anger that someone could betray journalism like this. I ended the piece thusly:
In the bluntest terms, Hannan objectified Vanderbilt’s transness; he saw her gender identity as a hook to get more eyeballs to his story and his work, and he wasn’t going to let frivolous facts, like transgender people being 25 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population, get in his way. He disregarded her desire to keep this aspect of her life private. He, and Grantland, profited from her death.
Hannan’s essay is journalistically unethical. It’s also grossly inhuman.
Since then, I have come to learn that while what Hannan, D’Anastasio and others have done to harm sources – whether out of negligence, ignorance, arrogance or straight maliciousness – is still unethical, it is also much more human than I once gave it credit for, and therefore, it can and must change.
Journalism has a problem. As Grace mentions in her piece, “What happened to Lawhead is horrific. What makes it more horrific is that games journalism barely talks about it. Its coverage of gaming’s #MeToo movement marches on, and yet again, it leaves victims behind in its wake.” And to mirror what Grace said right after this, we need to bring about a radical restructuring of this medium. It is time for a change. I support Nathalie. But I don’t just hope they eventually get accountability – I am also demanding it.
Please join us in doing the same.
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