Article Exposing Steve Wynn’s Sexual Coercion Killed In 1998
Steve Wynn in September 2014. Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman February 5, 2018
The Las Vegas Review-Journal stopped the publication of an article detailing Steve Wynn’s rampant sexual harassment and ordered the article deleted from the newspaper’s computer system, the Review-Journal reported.
The article was killed in 1998 after Wynn’s lawyers met with newspaper leadership, and the newspaper paid for two former employees of Wynn to undergo lie detector tests. Details in the article included a culture of harassment at Wynn’s casinos, and that waitresses were sent to “accommodate” high-rollers in their hotel suites.
Neither Thomas Mitchell, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, or publisher, Sherman Frederick, at the time the article was reported could recall the details from the incident.
“We looked into those sort of things but couldn’t nail them down,” said Mitchell. Mitchell said he did not kill stories due to outside pressure.
Included in the article were details from a 1997 federal lawsuit against the Mirage casino, where Wynn was chairman, brought by 11 waitresses. They told of how they were asked to give patrons kisses, consent to being groped and told to have sex with patrons for money. The Mirage settled the suits by 2003.
Lie detector tests very rarely used by mainstream media outlets. The man who performed the polygraph for the Review-Journal said the only other paper he had done such a test for was the National Enquirer.
In 2015, casino magnate and major Republican funder Sheldon Adelson bought the Review-Journal. Since the sale, articles about Adelson’s ventures and businesses have been killed and heavily edited by senior management.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Fast Forward Brooklyn event with Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled days before Israeli far-right minister’s US trip
-
Fast Forward Marco Rubio sits down with Michael Benz, Jewish former Trump official with an antisemitic online persona
-
Fast Forward Eyeing a new opportunity, Jewish settlers are positioning themselves on the Gaza border
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Jewish students, alumni decry ‘weaponization of antisemitism’ across country
-
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history
-
Opinion Why can Harvard stand up to Trump? Because it didn’t give in to pro-Palestinian student protests
-
Culture How an Israeli dance company shaped a Catholic school boy’s life
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.