PITTSBURGH, PA - On Friday, my phone started blowing up with texts from local reporters about the death of infamous Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Michael Fuoco, who was found dead in his home last Thursday. It was unclear why he died: toxicology tests are still being performed on Fuoco, who struggled with cocaine and drug addiction for many decades.
When a local high school sports reporter dies, there's almost always some sort of obituary in a local media outlet. However, in the case of Fuoco, who was a regular fixture on local TV for decades, there has been a total media blackout despite the flurry of text messages between reporters around town talking about his death.
It's very odd that Fuoco had served as president of the Pittsburgh NewsGuild for over a decade. In 2020, he was even given a lifetime achievement award for years of reporting on the police (reporting that was controversial among many for glorifying the police and minimizing police brutality).
Three weeks after the award ceremony, I exposed him as a rapist, who preyed on college students twenty or thirty years younger in his part-time role as an adjunct journalism professor at two local universities. He would entangle women by offering them drugs and drinks, coercing women into sex, and promising them career help if they gave in to him.
If they refused, he could easily quash their hopes of getting prized internships in a town where he was a living legend. Worse, he sometimes got physically abusive with women when they tried to stop his sexual abuse
One Pitt former undergraduate described to me in 2020 what occurred when Fuoco, her professor, took a group of students out to drink.
"We continued to drink, and he revealed to me that he had other substances on hand, inviting me to partake. I expressed reservations, and then after drinking significantly more, my reservations fell away, and I did partake," the student told me. "Thus compromised, but consenting, I accompanied him to a hotel room for more substances and for sex. "
"He was my teacher and responsible for my grade while this was ongoing. I thought, too, that I might professionally benefit from his success as a journalist," the student told me, echoing the stories of many other aspiring young journalists.
As a member of the NewsGuild union, who had been illegally fired for union organizing at Politico, I was outraged by the conduct and its negative effects on my union. My father had been a union leader at the United Electrical Workers (UE) in Pittsburgh for more than four decades, and it outraged me to see solidarity perverted to cover up abuse.
The newspaper union was also in a tough fight against a vicious anti-union employer at the Post-Gazette. Clearly, he was hurting the union as the company was getting ready to rid the newspaper of the union, which they later did.
For nearly a year, I fought inside my union to get him removed, but he had too many friends in both the media and the union world. I published two stories on the subject, but Fuoco assured local reporters that I was "crazy" and somehow even "anti-union"; the local Pittsburgh media ignored our exposés on Fuoco.
It took me getting beat up by Fuoco and his boys to get The New York Times to start making phone calls and asking questions, which eventually got Fuoco removed.
When The New York Times did write about him, they described him as the "Harvey Weinstein of Pittsburgh," given the prolific nature of his abuse of dozens of young female journalists. (The New York Times story should be read in full to get a sense of how far many journalists went in Pittsburgh to cover up Fuoco’s behavior.
Following his death, some local journalists have described Fuoco to me as "complicated," but such descriptions angered his survivors.
"He wasn't complicated," a survivor told me on Monday. "He was abusive. He abused drugs. He abused human beings. He abused power. He abused the truth. He was physically and psychologically abusive."
For many survivors, it's crucial to their recovery process that they talk about his impact on them, even though others may consider it “poor taste.”
"When their offenders die, survivors often face a complicated emotional journey for which they need understanding, support, and acceptance," writes psychologist Amanda Ann Gregory, "If you feel uncomfortable with the concept of speaking ill of the dead, you might be ill-equipped to support survivors, as you might feel tempted to minimize, challenge, or silence them. Instead, consider that survivors may need to speak ill of the dead to support their trauma recovery."
I can't imagine how women who faced severe sexual and physical abuse felt as journalists attempted to downplay the severity of Fuoco's crimes because I, myself, felt triggered hearing journalists tell me to shut up about his past.
When I went to question Fuoco at a union rally in September of 2020, I was punched repeatedly in the ribs, then surrounded by a mob of his boys who pushed me in a circle and threatened to kick my ass. Fortunately, some members of my father's union, the United Electrical Workers, just happened to be at the rally that day and intervened just in time to stop what could have been a brutal beating by Fuoco's flunkies.
A few weeks later, after Fuoco was forced to resign in September of 2020, I received a graphic email depicting how an officer in his union wanted me to be raped and murdered. The email also mentioned my father at length, causing panic and fear in my family.
With Fuoco in his late 60s, addicted to cocaine, and his career ruined by my reporting, even my father advised me that he was worried about my safety and that precautions should be taken. I had to get the police involved and speak to all of my neighbors about what to do in case Fuoco got coked-up one night and showed up at my house.
"Mike Fuoco was chaos," one survivor of his physical abuse advised me.
After a three-year court battle, we won a lawsuit in 2023 stemming from the physical assault and harassment. While the legal decision brought some justice, the brain chemistry effects of the physical assault still affect me occasionally and I find myself triggered when thinking about him.
"When someone experiences a traumatic event or experiences extreme fear, brain chemistry is altered and the brain begins to function differently--this is called the 'Fear Circuitry' and it is a protective mechanism which we all have inside of us," says Harvard University Medical School Professor Jim Hopper, one of the world's leading experts.
For years, I struggled with panic attacks and PTSD incidents when I was occasionally reminded of the fear that I felt reporting on Fuoco. This past week was rough for me as I felt I couldn't discuss it with many of my friends without fear of being triggered and to be honest, felt healing.
However, many Pittsburgh journalists want to ignore his abuse because while these journalists may not have been complicit in covering it up, they knew and often respected other journalists who did cover for Fuoco.
University of Texas Professor Robert Prentice, who studied how Fuoco could get away with it for so long, concluded it was because Fuoco had a "network of complicity."
"The active participants were drawn into the network, influenced by the harasser's power, charisma, and ability to control and shape information. They often protected the harasser by making excuses, shielding them from criticism, and sabotaging victims who complained," wrote Prentice. "Passive enablers tended to turn a blind eye to the harassing behavior, making light of it or rationalizing it."
In the movie Spotlight about how Boston Globe reporters uncovered sexual abuse, one character says, "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse a child." In Pittsburgh, it took a village to cover up Fuoco's abuse of women for decades.
While Michael Fuoco has died, his "network of complicity" is still very much alive in Pittsburgh's media refusal to discuss his historical legacy.
For sexual assault survivors looking for assistance, the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800- 656-4673 is run by the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network and they offer a list of resources online.The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania offers guidance and resources for those in an unsafe and inequitable workplace and who wish to file a complaint with the PHRC or U.S. EEOC.
