A recent report alleges that HBO CEO Casey Bloys urged certain staff members to troll TV critics who shared negative opinions about the network’s programming.
According to a series of text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, Bloys was in communication with HBO’s senior vice president of drama programming Kathleen McCaffery when he requested that someone “go on a mission” to make TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk “feel bad” for sharing her negative response to Perry Mason on social media. “Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” Bloys wrote to McCaffery. “Do you have a secret handle? Couldn’t we say especially given that it’s D-Day to dismiss a soldier’s experience like that seems pretty disrespectful … this must be answered!” While no apparent action was taken against VanArendonk, several instances of targeted trolling did take place in the following months.
The report goes on to claim that Bloys and McCaffrey have spoken about using what they describe as a “secret army” of social media accounts to push back against any negative opinions voiced about HBO’s programming. Rolling Stone further verified that the sender of many of the messages was using a phone registered to McCaffrey herself, suggesting the executive was personally responsible for some of the trolling messages. At the time of writing, HBO has not pushed back against the validity of the messages but has officially stated that will not “comment on select exchanges between programmers and errant tweets.”
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Rolling Stone goes further into the creation of the fake accounts, providing evidence that Bloys and McCaffery used anonymous profiles in an attempt to shut the negative responses garnered by shows such as The Nevers, Mare of Easttown, and the cancelation of Dare.
This report comes amid a looming lawsuit filed against former HBO staff member Sully Temori who has filed a wrongful termination case against the company. Among many other complaints regarding his working conditions, Temori has stated that was assigned the task of creating and using fake social media accounts to defend HBO productions against naysayers online.
The reviewed messages detail several conversations had between Temori and McCaffery, one of which claims that Bloys is “obsessed” with Twitter, now known as X. “He always texts me asking me to find friends to reply … is there a way to create a dummy account that can’t be traced to us to do his bidding,” wrote McCaffery in response to Temori.
Neither Bloys nor McCaffery have addressed the report or issued a statement on the messages.
