More on breaking Vice news scandal:
One woman said she was riding a Ferris wheel at Coney Island after a company event when a co-worker suddenly took her hand and put it on his crotch. Another said she felt pressured into a sexual relationship with an executive and was fired after she rejected him.
A third said that a co-worker grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and she used her umbrella to fend him off.
These women did not work among older men at a hidebound company. They worked at Vice, an insurgent force in news and entertainment known for edgy content that aims for millennial audiences on HBO and its own TV network.
But as Vice Media has built itself from a fringe Canadian magazine into a nearly $6 billion global media company, its boundary-pushing culture created a workplace that was degrading and uncomfortable for women, current and former employees say.
An investigation by The New York Times has found four settlements involving allegations of sexual harassment or defamation against Vice employees, including its current president.
In addition, more than two dozen other women, most in their 20s and early 30s, said they had experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct at the company — unwanted kisses, groping, lewd remarks and propositions for sex.
The settlements and the many episodes of harassment the women described depict a top-down ethos of male entitlement at Vice, where women said they felt like just another party favor at an organization where partying often was an extension of the job.
What stands out about the women’s accounts — in the wake of a public reckoning over sexual assault and harassment by mostly older men — is that the allegations involve men in their 20s, 30s and 40s who came of age long after workplace harassment was not only taboo but outlawed.
“The misogyny might look different than you would have expected it to in the 1950s, but it was still there, it was still ingrained,” said Kayla Ruble, a journalist who worked at Vice from 2014 to 2016. “This is a wakeup call.”
Vice and its co-founder and chief executive, Shane Smith, have long been open about the company’s provocative atmosphere. But Vice is now struggling to reconcile its past — famous for coverage of streetwear, drugs and sex, as well as its raucous parties — with its emergence as a global media company backed by corporate giants like Disney and Fox.