Journalists that participated in the cover-up got access to his film premieres, parties at award ceremonies, interviews with celebrities and so on. Turns out that was enough to get every entertainment journalist to cover up his crimes for years.
Apparently people in Hollywood don't see any problem with this!
I suspect the bigger problem is that there are so few honest people involved in the business that you would have to shut down if you broke off association with everybody doing shady things in Hollywood.
While I'm pleased to see Weinstein going down, I keep scratching my head about "We know that there are people in Hollywood doing far worse things. Why the focus on Weinstein in particular? Something smells kind of fishy ..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
It's not the people's revolt that overthrows the king, it's the court who are overthrowing the king by allowing the people's revolt to progress... because the king has stopped providing them with enough treasure to keep him propped up.
My guess is that something changed the political calculus for his key supporters and they either precipitated this or allowed it to happen.
For sure there are other abusers who are probably showering their allies in treasure to keep them loyal so they don't get caught up in this.
Probably something done a lot in politics.
That's the implied norm of institution (business/government) relationships with the media - we maintain relationships, you write about us and some stories will be critique us so we'll soft cut your access off for a little bit but not explicitly and then we'll let you in again.
An example would the one you yourself made. Journalists join the White House press corps, and over time get access to various West Wing staffers to write stores.
(if you're wondering whether this mechanism contributes to status quo bias and protection of established interests you're headed in the right direction :) )
Access journalism is distinct from investigative journalism which is what we're seeing here. Investigative journalism assumes journalistic independence and a more adversarial relationship with the institution being documented. What we hope to see after an expose like this is the institution coming to terms with its behavior and in response to public outcry, tempering the things that were revealed.
The problem of course is that institutional power in the United States, especially that of large corporations, is so large that they respond to this kind of journalism with aggression.
I don't know whether Disney will suffer for making that choice, but I hope that they do.