Harry Evans Has This to Say About Today's Media

At 92, the legendary editor calls the press ‘deeply polluted’ as he explains how he was fired by Rupert Murdoch, why The New York Times and The Washington Post have lost their influence, wife Tina Brown’s mistaken decision to work with a ‘seductive’ Harvey Weinstein and his own current foray into the Oscar race — with said Harvey Weinstein.

- Maer Roshan

LONG BEFORE HE stormed the barricades of American media, Sir Harry Evans already was something of a legend. In 1968, the then-40-year-old editor of The Sunday Times led a landmark investigation into thalidomide, a drug that had left thousands of infants throughout the world suffering from severe deformities. Taking on some of the most powerful interests in the country, he helped overturn some of Britain’s restrictive libel laws and launched a new era of investigative journalism that became the model for newspapers worldwide.

When The Boston Globe launched its Spotlight division in 1970 — which inspired the 2016 Oscarwinning movie — one of the paper’s editors was sent to spend the summer in London, just to observe Evans and his crew.

The editor’s epic battle against thalidomide recently was chronicled in Attacking the Devil, distributed by The Weinstein Co. and directed by venerable British documentarian Jacqui Morris. Buoyed by the success of Spotlight and encouraged by the documentary’s rapturous reception in London, the Weinsteins are set to release Devil stateside thisyear, with high hopes for its Oscar potential. (British film company See-Saw also is at work on a feature adaptation of the story, with Hugh Grant said to be among the contenders vying for the lead.)

Now 92, the preternaturally energetic Evans spends much of his time writing a series of bestselling books about American history published by Knopf and other presses and visiting with family and friends. (Evans has five children, three with former wife Enid and two with current wife, Tina Brown, 62.)