On Monday, Simon & Schuster’s PR pro, Adam Rothberg, tweeted the following statement:
Statement: After careful consideration @simonschuster and its @threshold_books have cancelled publication of Dangerous by Milo Yiannopoulos
— (((Adam Rothberg))) (@AdamRothberg) February 20, 2017
Simon & Schuster’s decision follows outrage over a recording that appeared to show Yiannopoulos endorsing sex between “younger boys” and older men. The remarks were made during an internet livestream and circulated in an edited video on Twitter.
In the clip, Yiannopoulos said the age of consent was “not this black and white thing” and that relationships “between younger boys and older men . . . can be hugely positive experiences”.
The Washington Post further explained:
In a video interview early last year, Yiannopoulos condoned sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and joked about a sexual encounter he said he had with a Catholic priest as a teenager.
“You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means,” he told the hosts of a podcast. “Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty.”
Yiannopoulos posted a video on his Facebook page that addressed his remarks, which he later took down, saying that he would instead hold a press conference on Tuesday.
In the video, Yiannopoulos responded to news reports claiming that he endorsed child abuse, saying that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
The Guardian reported:
He did not contest the recording but said his comments were “stupidly worded” and that it had been edited to remove context.
“In most cases— you guys know—if I say something outrageous or offensive, in most cases my only regret is that I didn’t piss off more people, but in this case if I could do it again I wouldn’t phrase things the same way. Because it’s led to confusion.”
Yiannopoulos also confirmed his book’s cancelation on his Facebook page:
He then posted that the decision “will not defeat” him:
Yiannopoulos’s tune didn’t change on Tuesday, even though he announced during his press conference that he was resigning from Breitbart:
My employer, Breitbart News, has stood by me when others caved. They have allowed me to carry conservative and libertarian ideas to communities that would otherwise never have had them. I would be wrong to allow my poor choice of words to detract from my colleagues' important job, which is why I am resigning from Breitbart, effective immediately.
He called the news of his comments a “cynical media witch hunt from people who do not care about children” and said those that released the information “care about destroying [him] and [his] career, and by extension, [his] allies”:
“I haven’t ever apologized before, and I don’t anticipate doing so again,” Yiannopoulos said.
Breitbart News has largely remained quiet on the resignation, but it issued the following statement, which was included in a brief news article on its website:
Milo Yiannopoulos’s bold voice has sparked much-needed debate on important cultural topics confronting universities, the LGBTQ community, the press, and the tech industry.
Milo notified us this morning of his decision to resign as editor of Breitbart Tech and we accepted his resignation.
It appears that Mr. Yiannopoulos does not expect to be off the stage for long. He said on Tuesday that he would proceed with publishing a book, saying other publishers were interested, and that he was planning to start a media venture.
“I’m proud to be a warrior for free speech and creative expression,” he said, adding, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Was stepping away from Yiannopoulos enough?
Though both Simon & Schuster and Breitbart News have severed ties with Yiannopoulos, many are saying the moves are too little, too late.
[RELATED: Keep your cool in a crisis with these steps.]
“For the company, which seemed somewhat blindsided by the initial reaction to Yiannopoulos’s book, the news offered an incontrovertible out—an opportunity to save face with authors and booksellers appalled by the deal, without provoking charges of suppressing free speech or unleashing the rage of his millions of followers,” The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert wrote .
However, the decision isn’t giving the publisher good PR.
Twitter users criticized the book publisher for cancelling Yiannopoulos’s book only after the backlash over his pedophilia comments.
Roxane Gay—an author who pulled her book from Simon & Schuster after the publisher made a deal with Yiannopoulos—posted a lengthy statement on Tumblr. It read, in part:
In canceling Milo’s book contract, Simon & Schuster made a business decision the same way they made a business decision when they decided to publish that man in the first place. When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them. They did not finally “do the right thing” and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. They were fine with his racist and xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and transgender people online. Let me assure you, as someone who endured a bit of that harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty but hey, we must protect the freedom of speech. Certainly, Simon & Schuster was not alone in what they were willing to tolerate. A great many people were perfectly comfortable with the targets of Milo’s hateful attention until that attention hit too close to home.
. . . There are some who will spin the cancellation of this book contract as a failure of the freedom of speech but such is not the case. This is yet another example of how we are afforded the freedom of speech but there is no freedom from the consequences of what we say.
After its decision to ink a deal with Yiannopoulos, though, Simon & Schuster might just want their PR headache to go away—and minimize the damage to its brand.
Gilbert continued:
At this point, the publisher presumably hopes, everyone can move on, without the shadow of author boycotts or review boycotts or even large-scale protests against not just Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint that purchased Dangerous, but Simon & Schuster itself. It’s hard, however, to imagine the controversy going away altogether. Yiannopoulos’s book, which reached the #1 spot on Amazon while available for presale, seemed a transparently cynical moneymaking effort that appeared to be paying off—at substantial cost to the publisher’s brand. Now, Simon & Schuster has no bestseller, while its asserted reasons for publishing Yiannopoulos in the first place have been substantially undermined.
It can be hard to believe that Breitbart News executives had a similar train of thought, as the publication has come under fire several times for the content it posts. However, the resignation might save face and persuade advertisers to stay on with the news outlet.
The Wall Street Journal’s Alexandra Bruell wrote:
. . . For Breitbart, the tech editor stepping down removes at least one controversy that was sure to make advertisers skittish. The news site, which caters to the alt-right, is already dealing with being blacklisted by some marketers, and online masses using Twitter accounts like Sleeping Giants are calling out remaining advertisers and pressuring them to cut ties, reports the Huffington Post.
“After losing his invite to speak at a pre-eminent conservative conference called CPAC and having his book contract canceled by Simon & Schuster, Mr. Yiannopoulos said he already received interest from other book publishers and intends to launch his own media company,” Bruell wrote.
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