New York Times Reporter’s Defense Of Biden Sex Allegation Coverage Roundly Mocked
When a woman claimed President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kananaugh had inappropriately touch her 35 years before at a high school party, the New York Times was all over the story.
But when a woman claimed that former vice president Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her when she was 29 and he was 51, The Times waited 19 days to do a story — and then mostly dismissed the woman’s claims.
That made a Twitter user with the name Jim McCarthy curious, so he asked two Times reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin – who co-wrote a book about Kavanaugh — why the paper treated the two stories differently.
“It appears you both have remained silent on the Biden sexual harassment story, even when your top editor contrasted it with NYT’s Kavanaugh coverage,” McCarthy asked. “Why is that?”
Kelly answered, saying that claim was “not true” and praising The Times coverage on the Biden allegation.
Then she said: “And as our executive editor @deanbaquet pointed out in a recent interview with my colleague @benyt, Kavanaugh ‘was a live, ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country. It was just a different news judgment moment.’”
Uh, what? Biden is running for president — that’s the biggest political story in the country, bigger, one could argue, than a Supreme Court nominee.
Baquet had given an interview to Times reporter Ben Smith and was asked why the two stories were handled differently.
“Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way. Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation. And when I say in a public way, I don’t mean in the public way of Tara Reade’s. If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case. So I thought in that case, if The New York Times was going to introduce this to readers, we needed to introduce it with some reporting and perspective. Kavanaugh was in a very different situation,” Baquet said. “It was a live, ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country. It was just a different news judgment moment,” Baquet said.
Reade says in 1993, Biden pinned her against a wall, reached under her skirt and pushed his fingers inside her. When she pulled away, Reade says Biden told her, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.”
“He greeted me, he remembered my name, and then we were alone. It was the strangest thing,” Reade said in a podcast. “There was no like, exchange really. He just had me up against the wall.”
Meanwhile, Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, could not remember when her alleged groping took place, and all her friends who were at the same party said they didn’t know what she was talking about. Still, Kavanaugh was dragged through the mud for weeks, with Democrats screaming, “I believe her.”
Kelly was roundly mocked on Twitter for her bizarre answer.
“The only reason the Biden story isn’t ‘the biggest political story in the country’ is because reporters are actively ignoring it and looking for opportunities to write it off,” one user wrote.
The media loves an upper class blonde like the honorable Christine Blasey Ford. Make no mistake the slander of the brave Tara Reade is because she’s not a Liberal feminist’s idea of what Joe Biden would want to touch. #theNation pic.twitter.com/NSKleg1Jol
— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) April 16, 2020
“How the guy trying to be president isn’t a big story to the NYT is amazing,” wrote another.
How the guy trying to be president isn't a big story to the NYT is amazing
— Ben McDonald (@Bmac0507) April 15, 2020
“Remember Kate got a book deal for trying to find any negative detail she could about Kavanaugh’s former prep school to smear him with, but now excuses lack of coverage for Biden allegation<” wrote another.
Remember Kate got a book deal for trying to find any negative detail she could about Kavanaugh's former prep school to smear him with, but now excuses lack of coverage for Biden allegation.
Well-deserved ratio. pic.twitter.com/lrz5bOZ54E
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) April 16, 2020
“And Biden’s accuser is not a “live, ongoing story” because . . . why, exactly?” wrote yet another.
And Biden's accuser is not a "live, ongoing story" because . . . why, exactly?
— Brian (@bhg70) April 15, 2020
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