Jason Mojica

In March 2013 Mojica became one of the first Americans to meet the reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Mojica and Vice Media founder Shane Smith are said to have come up with the idea of gaining access to film in North Korea by appealing to Kim Jong Un's reported love of basketball by proposing "a goodwill game of basketball with North Korea's national team." The Vice crew brought with them 5-time NBA Champion Dennis Rodman, and three members of the Harlem Globetrotters.[12] New York Times media critic David Carr wrote at the time: "Vice gained a share of infamy by getting access to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the notoriously secretive country he leads through a caper involving Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters, a stunt that drew attention, invective and clicks."[1]

While in Pyongyang, Mojica and the other members of the Vice crew attended a lavish dinner hosted by Kim Jong Un.[13] "It was the most surreal experience of my life," Mojica said.[14] Mojica also tweeted: "Um... so Kim Jong Un just got the #VICEonHBO crew wasted... no really, that happened." Vice correspondent Ryan Duffy, who also attended the banquet, told the Associated Press: "Dinner was an epic feast. Felt like about 10 courses in total. I'd say the winners were the smoked turkey and sushi, though we had the Pyongyang cold noodles earlier in the trip and that's been the runaway favorite so far."[15] Mojica, Duffy and the others were criticized on social media and on news sites for their Tweets and comments praising their feast, in lieu of the fact that millions of North Koreans have died of starvation. The website Gawker intermingled Mojica's tweets with images of starving infants and children on the verge of death.[16] New York magazine commented: "Aside from the brutal slave-labor camps, the routine rape and torture of political prisoners, mass starvation extreme enough to induce episodes of cannibalism... North Korea sounds like a blast!"[17] Shane Smith complained that a State Department official told him: "We would have hoped they would have taken the food from the banquet and given it to the starving people."[18] The New York Times has reported that as many as two million North Koreans have died of starvation.[15][19]

The trip was severely criticized by the Obama administration, with White House press secretary Jay Carney saying that, "Instead of spending money on celebrity sporting events to entertain the elites of that country, the North Korean regime should focus on the well-being of its own people who have been starved, imprisoned, and denied their human rights." [20] A State Department spokesperson said: "Clearly you’ve got the regime spending money to wine and dine foreign visitors, when they should be feeding their own people.[21]

After the first season of the Vice show on HBO, Mojica became the founding Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of the company's stand-alone digital news platform, Vice News. The site launched in March 2014 with coverage of the conflict and unrest in Crimea, South Sudan, and Venezuela. One media critic noted that "the trailer for the forthcoming news channel gives a clear look at what Vice is interested in: unrest, conflict, revolution, persecution."[22]

In August 2014, Vice News became the first news organization to embed with the Islamic State.[1] The resulting documentary, The Islamic State, received worldwide news coverage, has been viewed more than 13 million times online, and won a 2014 Peabody Award and a National Magazine Award.[23][24]

Such work led the New York Times then-media critic David Carr, who had sparred with Vice founder Shane Smith, to reconsider his previously harsh views: "Being the crusty old-media scold felt good at the time, but recent events suggest that Vice is deadly serious about doing real news that people, yes, even young people, will actually watch."[25] Carr wrote of the ISIS documentary in particular, "The ISIS story scans as both propaganda and remarkable journalism, some of it filmed in Syria, the most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter right now." More broadly, Carr wrote, he was "glad that someone’s willing to do the important work of bearing witness, the kind that can get you killed if something goes wrong."[26][25]

Others were more critical, with some suggesting that in making a film about the Islamic State, Vice had colluded with a terrorist organization. At a panel discussion at NYU, Mojica said, "I can certainly say that there is no collusion between Vice News and the Islamic State as much as there is a bit of sparring and each of us probably trying to get something different out of [the experience]... [B]ut that was a very unique case and it comes with, of course, conditions in order to get in and get out with your life. You understand you're operating under a very peculiar set of rules." Notably, "Mojica declined to elaborate when asked what 'conditions,' specifically, were agreed upon with the militants," according to a report in The Huffington Post.[27] Kevin Sutcliffe, who headed Vice's programming in Europe, told The Huffington Post that its filmmakers "hadn't been able to travel freely during his reporting trip inside Syria and [were] always accompanied by a minder from the Islamic State."[27]

During Mojica's tenure as a founding editor and the executive producer of Vice News, the The Washington Post reported, the company regularly "blurred the lines between reporting and advertising. It has removed or altered some of its work after advertisers complained that the material put them in an unflattering light. On at least two occasions, it wove documentary footage into promotions for advertisers."[28] The Post reported that in one instance, "Vice showed particular deference toward its sponsors in a three-part series about a year ago on the Ku Klux Klan's recruitment of military veterans. The series initially appeared online with the logos of several companies visible onscreen. In one shot, for example, a bystander wears a T-shirt featuring the Nike logo; in another, a self-identified Klansman wears a cap with a Budweiser logo and drinks a Bud Lite. "The appearance of the logos set off a brief flurry among the documentary's producers, who scrambled to obscure them from viewers after the documentary had already been posted. The series was briefly taken down and the logos of the two companies — both of which have been Vice sponsors — were digitally blurred, as was the logo on a Coke can. The series then reappeared, with the images altered."[28]

In November 2017, Vice Media formally suspended Mojica pending an investigation of allegations into sexual harassment made against him by several past and current employees. The following month, Mojica was terminated after an internal investigation. The company said in a memo sent to employees: "Vice Media fired three employees for behavior ranging from verbal and sexual harassment to other behavior that is inconsistent with our policies, our values, and the way in which we believe colleagues should work together."[29][30][31][32]

That internal corporate investigation was prompted by investigative stories in The New York Times and The Daily Beast examining allegations of sexual harassment regarding several senior male executives in the company. Several women accused Mojica of such misconduct. The Times' expose reported, for example, that "Abby Ellis, a former Vice journalist, said that in 2013 Mr. Mojica... tried to kiss her against her will. She said that she yelled at him and hit him with an umbrella multiple times. She said that she faced other unwanted advances from Mr. Mojica after the incident. Ms. Ellis said that after the episode she felt that their relationship soured and that she was missing out on newsroom opportunities." Mojica responded by saying that he had been "misreading a moment" by "foolishly trying to kiss Abby." A second woman employed by Vice, Helen Donahue, alleged that Mojica had "grabbed her breasts and buttocks at a company holiday party", the Times reported.[33][34]

The Times also reported that Vice settled a potential lawsuit "for an unknown amount" of money with Martina Veltroni, a former employee, who alleged that while he was her supervisor, Mojica "retaliated against her after they had a sexual relationship" when Veltroni sought to end it.[33]

Several other women came forward to allege that Mojica, as their supervisor, dismissed their claims of sexual harassment by other men in the company, and were told they had to tolerate such behavior to keep their own jobs. A former Vice associate producer, Phoebe Barghouty, told The Daily Beast, that Mojica told her, after she complained of sexual harassment by other men in the company directed against her: "The thing about working in this industry, is that we have people going into war zones and the only people willing to do that are sociopaths. And you just have to deal with that because that's the only kind of person who can get that story." Mojica responded by making the claim that Barghouty's recollection was incorrect and inconsistent with his attitudes.[34]