On August 8, Frank Report emailed Bloomberg reporter Ellen Huet to ask questions about her story “The Dark Side of Orgasmic Meditation.”
The story was published six years ago in Bloomberg Businessweek. It had a huge impact. It is largely based on anonymous sources.
Huet has declined to respond.
Huet’s Dark Side story with its anonymous accusers, led to a second story in Bloomberg five months later. Huet reported that anonymous sources told her the FBI had begun a criminal investigation into OneTaste.
“The stories focused heavily on the negative side of the company and on members’ bad experiences,” Huet later wrote to OneTaste executives.
The Dark Side story featured filtered photos to comport with its dark and anonymous theme.
Unusual Indictment Following Huet’s Reporting
After a five-year FBI investigation, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY filed a one-count indictment charging two female OneTaste executives – Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz – with conspiracy to commit forced labor, but without including the forced labor charge itself. It was the first time a US attorney charged someone with conspiracy to commit forced labor alone, without the substantive crime of forced labor or sex trafficking.
Huet’s Influence on Media Coverage and Personal Success
Ellen Huet achieved an upward boost from her anonymously-sourced OneTaste story.
Between Huet’s first story and OneTaste’s executives’ indictment, the BBC, Rolling Stone, and other media credited Huet for exposing OneTaste. Huet appeared in subsequent media productions discussing the allegations in her original story in VICE Media’s True Believers and later in Netflix’s Orgasm Inc.
Huet secured a book deal based on her Bloomberg articles with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a Macmillan Publishers subsidiary, one of the largest global publishing conglomerates.
An anonymously sourced story sparked an FBI investigation. OneTaste Inc. went from being a profitable educational company to being deeply in the red and, within months, closed its doors.
The Role of Anonymity in Modern Journalism
The Bloomberg Way is a book that provides a guide to the ethical standards Bloomberg expects from its reporters and editors.
“The Bloomberg Way,” a 300-page “Guide for Reporters and Editors,” states:
“It’s a rare occasion when an anonymously sourced story rises to the quality of our best work.”
However, if impact is a metric of “best work,” which may be the case in modern journalism, this may be one of Bloomberg’s best.
Yet the Bloomberg Way states the following:
“When we decide to publish information based on unidentified sources, we put our readers at a disadvantage because the sourcing isn’t transparent or credible.”
Huet’s “Dark Side” story revolves around anonymity, justified by fear.
“Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed 16 former OneTaste staffers and community members, some involved as recently as last year. Most spoke anonymously because they signed nondisclosure agreements or fear retribution. Some, including Michal, asked to withhold their last names because they don’t want to be publicly associated with the company.”
Michal, anonymized by using only a first name, is the first to use the word “cult.”
Huet writes, “Michal and others say OneTaste deserves the term’s full weight.”
Anonymous Allegations and Vague Language in the Reporting
According to Huet,
“OneTaste says about 1,400 people have taken its coaching program, 6,500 have come to an intro class, and more than 14,000 have signed up for online courses and its app.”
Since Huet says she spoke to “16 former OneTaste staffers and community members,” a fairly small sampling, especially since 13 are anonymous and one woman had nothing negative to say.
The following paragraph, based entirely on anonymous sources, summarizes Huet’s allegations against OneTaste and its leaders. It uses “many,” “some,” and “frequently” to convey the extent of the allegations of anonymous “former staffers” and OneTaste “community members.”
Huet wrote (emphasis mine):
“Many of the former staffers and community members say OneTaste resembled a kind of prostitution ring—one that exploited trauma victims and others searching for healing. In some members’ experiences, the company used flirtation and sex to lure emotionally vulnerable targets. It taught employees to work for free or cheap to show devotion. And managers frequently ordered staffers to have sex or OM with each other or with customers.
But how many is many? How frequent is frequently?
Throughout the story, Huet uses anonymous individuals, in unknown numbers, in unknown relationships with the company to make critical allegations against the company.
Huet uses in the story:
Former staffers and members say
Some former staffers say
Former staff say
Several former members say
Other former students say
Former staffers say
Laurie and other former students say
Another former employee says
Some former members say
Some students
Two people familiar with the matter
Many who’ve become involved in the upper echelons describe
In the 5000-word story, only two non-anonymous sources had anything to say against OneTaste. Both men later retracted their stories or disputed the way Huet characterized them. The two non-anonymous sources only had a fractional contribution to the many ills ascribed to OneTaste by Huet, through her “many” (but less than 16) anonymous sources.
Huet wrote “many… in the upper echelons describe” OneTaste as “predatory”, etc. But since she spoke to only 16 “former staffers” and “community members”, how many of these were in the “upper echelons”? Does it justify the use of the word “many?”
“Many” is typically used to denote an indefinite large number, usually not a single digit number. Was it three? Or four? What is upper echelons anyway? The article does not say.
Huet’s article begins with the story of “Michal,“ a woman who “asked“ Huet “to withhold“ her last name because she did not “want to be publicly associated with the company.” Michal, whose uncorroborated experiences are the beginning, middle and end of the story, is the most quoted source. She is of particular interest, because Huet had to go out of her way not to report evidence that contradicted critical aspects of Michal’s story. That contradiction came from one of Huet’s personal friends, unnamed in the story, who was once married to Michal.
Huet’s Interaction with OneTaste Executives Post-Story
Equally significant is that Huet chose to overlook individuals willing to go on record with a completely different viewpoint.
After getting her book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Huet wrote to two OneTaste executives seeking an interview for her book.
Huet had interviewed both women before. Both women said Huet misled them into thinking she would write a fair and balanced story about their business with named sources.
Former OneTaste CEO Joanna Van Vleck spoke to Ellen Huet before the Dark Side story.
OneTaste CEO Anjuli Ayer spoke with Ellen Huet more than once before the publication of the Dark Side.
Huet wrote to Anjuli Ayer and Joanna Van Vleck:
“[Y]ou both had sat in interviews with me and provided me with many other resources who could speak more positively about the company, and that side of OneTaste wasn’t very prominent in the story.”
To persuade the two women whose lives were dramatically altered by the story, to interview again, Huet blamed her editors for the one-sided use of anonymous negative sources over non-anonymous positive ones.
Huet wrote:
“The editors believed lots had been written already about the benefits of OneTaste’s teachings, and wanted to focus on what hadn’t been reported before. But I didn’t have a chance to get into all the nuances, the history, the philosophy, and more.”
The Bloomberg Way states:
“In most situations, the editor-in-chief, two executive editors or two managing editors must approve anonymously sourced reporting.”
The Bloomberg Way states:
“When we decide to use anonymous sourcing, there needs to be a discussion: What did the reporter ask? How was it asked? What was the response? Do all the anonymous sources agree? Why should we trust these people? How do they know what they know? What’s their motive? Why don’t they want their names used? What are we missing? What we don’t know will hurt us.”
Huet not only anonymized her negative sources, she semi-anonymized OneTaste. Huet uses language like “OneTaste denies” or “the company denies” the anonymously-made allegations without any in-depth coverage of their rebuttals or quoting the two women she interviewed at length.
Misha ‘Mike’ Safyan was Ellen Huet’s crucial anonymous source for her Dark Side story. But the two were more than reporter and source, they were friends on a personal level and more….
Ellen Huet with fellow members of a group she and Safyan were in.
Who’s in a cult? Ellen Huet with another member of the group she and Safyan joined – a fact undisclosed in the Bloomberg article.
Huet’s Key Anonymous Source
In our next story, Frank Report will investigate Huet’s most crucial anonymous source, Misha ‘Mike’ Safyan.
His relationship with Huet runs deep. They were part of the same San Francisco-based “intentional community” with very specific shared views and lifestyle. Some might argue they are members of the same “cult” or in the language of the group, the two were “kin.”
Huet does not disclose this personal relationship to her readers. Did she disclose it to her editors?
The Blomberg Way states:
“Journalists who develop a romantic or close relationship with a newsmaker, potential newsmaker or source should inform their team leaders and expect to be reassigned.”
Huet, who did not get reassigned, used her personal friendship with Mike Safyan to obtain her sources and shape her narrative in an impactful and highly praised story.
While doing so, Huet avoided corroboration or balance, and kept almost everyone anonymous, including Safyan’s ex-wife, Michal, the most quoted source in the story. Most especially, Huet kept Safyan anonymous for reasons that will become evident in our next post in this series.
To be continued…
