From Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth pg 348:
One abiding feature was the draconian nondisclosure and nontraditional workplace agreements staffers were required to sign before joining the company, 7 which demanded, “Individuals employed by Vice must be conscious of Vice’s non-traditional environment and comfortable with exposure to and participating in situations that may present themselves during the course of their employment.” These situations might include exposure “to highly provocative material, some of it containing extremely explicit sexual and controversial content,” as well as shoots on location that involved “unique and unusual situations which may be considered offensive, indecent or unacceptable by others.” Employees saw the agreement as barring them from complaining about lewd conduct and sexual come-ons from their supervisors, even if that wasn’t stipulated in black and white.
The supervisors were almost all male, and sexual liaisons between bosses and young associate producers were common. (Smith’s wife, Tamyka, was once a junior producer at Vice.) There was a huge problem, too, with sexual harassment, incidents that unspooled after work at bars, often following long drinking sessions.
Mark Carrigan 