Dislike of Woody Allen Isn’t an Excuse for Censorship

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Purely as a matter of economics, it’s perfectly understandable why Hachette Book Group would toss Woody Allen overboard hoping to keep his son Ronan Farrow happy.

At 32, Farrow is a journalistic supernova. His Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker articles about Harvey Weinstein in 2017 helped expose a sexual predator and usher in the MeToo movement. And his book “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” a cloak-and-dagger account of how he got the story, was an instant best-seller, selling more than 200,000 copies. The publisher of that book was Little, Brown & Co., one of Hachette’s two primary imprints. No doubt Little, Brown harbored dreams of publishing Farrow for years to come.

Allen, on the other hand, is 84. His career peaked more than 40 years ago. The movies “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” came out in 1977 and 1979, respectively. Though Allen has written books before — collections of short humor pieces — they were also published decades ago. And while he has continued to churn out movies, they don’t hold the culture’s attention as they once did. It is unlikely that Grand Central Publishing — Hachette’s other chief imprint — bought Allen’s memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” expecting anything more than modest sales. Given Allen’s age, it certainly didn’t envision a long-term relationship with the author.

So when Farrow objected to Hachette publishing Allen’s book and said he was severing ties with the company, and more than 100 Hachette employees walked out in protest of the Allen book last Thursday, it didn’t take Hachette long to fold.

As I said, from a revenue point of view, it was the obvious move. But in every other way, the decision stinks, a craven capitulation to woke culture. There are times when the right thing to do is to stand up for principle, even if it costs some money or causes a valued performer to walk away. This was one of those times. Or it should have been.

As you’ve no doubt read, Ronan Farrow’s objection to Allen’s book is that  his sister Dylan — Allen’s adopted daughter — has accused Allen of sexually abusing her in Connecticut in the early 1990s when she was 7. (Her mother, Mia Farrow, has long made the same accusation.) Last week, in an email to Michael Pietsch, the chief executive officer of Hachette, Farrow wrote:

Your policy of editorial independence among your imprints does not relieve you of your moral and professional obligations to the publisher of “Catch and Kill,” and as the leader of a company being asked to assist in efforts by abusive men to whitewash their crimes.

In fact, Farrow got it exactly backward. Pietsch’s moral and professional obligation was to publish Allen’s book, not to squash it.

There are two principles at stake. The first is the core American belief that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Allen’s case is much different from those of, say, Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer, who abused numerous women and whose actions were confirmed by investigations of one sort or another.

Although Allen has engaged in behavior that could be considered creepy — in “Manhattan” he plays a middle-aged man dating an underage girl; and, of course, there is his marriage to another of Mia Farrow’s adopted children, Soon-Yi Previn — Dylan Farrow is the only one who has ever accused him sexual abuse.

Allen, for his part, has always denied Dylan Farrow’s accusation and has long accused her mother of planting the idea during their acrimonious breakup. Connecticut authorities investigated the accusations, bringing in the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital, which concluded that Allen had not abused Dylan (the Farrow legal team disputed the results). He was never charged. In 2014, after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a friend of Mia and Dylan Farrow, aired the abuse allegations, Allen offered his rebuttal in a long blog post. You can read it here.

What this feels like is a sad family drama. While Ronan Farrow has always sided with his sister, another of Allen’s adopted children, Moses Farrow, now a family therapist, has supported his father. Mia Farrow has cut off all contact with Moses; Dylan and Ronan will have nothing to do with Allen or his wife, who is also their sister.

For years, most people viewed it as just that — a family matter — and Allen was able to continue with his career. But the MeToo movement changed the perception of him. A number of actors who had been cast in his films expressed regret, and several said they would donate their salaries from the movies to charity. In 2018, Amazon.com Inc. abruptly ended a deal it had with Allen and canceled a movie that was scheduled to be released. And now his memoir has also been canceled. Despite zero proof, the mob has pronounced him guilty. “An untouchable,” Vox called him.

Which leads me to the second principle: Mobs shouldn’t decide what gets published and what doesn’t. At first, that seemed to be Pietsch’s position as well. He noted that the various Hachette imprints operated independently. He then added:

We do not allow anyone’s publishing program to interfere with anyone else’s … Each book has its own mission … Our job as a publisher is to help the author achieve what they have set out to do in the creation of their book.

But the rank and file were having none of it. Hachette held two town-hall meetings, which were followed by a walkout of more than 100 employees. They demanded that Grand Central cancel the book, of course, but they also demanded that the company recognize that Hachette employees have the ability to speak up about books with which they disagree without fear of reprisal.

Sure, why not. Let’s see: Hachette has a division called Center Street, and a few months ago it published “Triggered” by Donald Trump Jr., a book devoted to mocking and smearing liberals. What’s to prevent an uprising of employees over that book — or over his father’s autobiography when his presidency is over?

Hachette also publishes the work of acclaimed photographer Sally Mann, who has printed pictures of her naked children. Could you see a right-wing mob one day objecting to her work? I sure could.

In the aftermath of Hachette’s decision, author Stephen King tweeted:

Daniel Okrent, the author and former public editor of the New York Times, sent me an email that read in part: “Trump publishes. Hannity publishes. OJ publishes. HITLER publishes, for chrissakes.” But not Woody Allen.

I have no special insight into Allen’s memoir. My guess is he would have laid out his side of the controversy, thus giving readers additional context in deciding how to think about Dylan Farrow’s accusation. But in the moment we’re living in, the employees of a large book publisher concluded that readers didn’t deserve that information. Their action is a repudiation of everything for which publishing is supposed to stand.

On Friday, after Hachette announced it was canceling Allen’s book, Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of the PEN American Center, which defends free expression, issued a short statement. Here is how it concluded:

As a defender of free speech and the availability of a wide breadth of books and ideas, we also fervently hope that the outcome does not lead publishers to shy away from manuscripts that editors think are worthwhile but that are about, or even by, people who may be considered contemptible.

Sadly, they already have.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

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