NYT on Tara Reade

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NYT on Tara Reade

NYT has often been criticized for their double standards on how they treat (D)'s vs. (R)'s, and Lisa Lerer's double standard with regards to how they handled sexual harassment claims against Joe Biden vs. Brett Kavanaugh showed it in spades with their response to Tara Reade's credible claims. They tweeted and summarized their editorial position as, “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable."

In response to the heat they were getting for that they edited the tweet and caption, released articles, and did their podcast with Lisa Lerer to justify their position. The problem isn't that they applied journalistic scrutiny towards Tara's claims, the problem is that this was newly found, something they never applied to Trump or Kavanaugh's accusers (despite a far less credible claims), that they spun their response, and most of all that their framing of the arguments is so easy to contrast.

Details

🗒️ NOTE:
My position is not that I think skepticism of claims in a political campaign is a bad thing, quite the contrary. But I wasn't championing "All Women Should be Believed" like Biden the DNC and the NYT was during the Kavanaugh or Trump attacks. I have a problem with the flip-flop on their editorial standards. As well as the incredible bias in the way they frame things.
Damage Control - After pressure over the insensitivity of the tweet and articles, NYT went back and removed “beyond the hugs, kisses and touching”... but stood by the "we found no evidence". [1] Of course they didn't do it in a journalistic way with a mea culpa, they stealth edited it, so they could pretend it never happened... like it was one of Joe's sexual assaults.

Premature editorial position - Their defense is that it was a couple of weeks ago and the details hadn't come out yet. So now of course it's more credible. Of course that belies the point that they put their reputation on the line by claiming they put their crack journalists and investigators, and was assuring their readership that there was no "there" there.

Yet, it came out of the following weeks that they didn't bother to interview her ex husband, her friends, ask her who else might know... and many others that came forward to let the public know that Tara's story is nothing new.

Most importantly, remember how they treated this different. They didn't publicize the story and troll for responses like they had with Trump or Kavanaugh, and then form an editorial position. They just formed an opinion before the story was widely talked about, anyone had a chance to com forward, or anything other than taking Lisa Lerer's word that it was investigated. They seem to have buried the lede like they buried the John Edwards, Harvey Weinstein, or Al Gore's sexual scandals. Jounralism has standards, not double standards.



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📚 References

Tara Reade
The FakeNews media has been actively suppressing information about Joe Biden's accuser, while the people screaming about Kavanaugh or Trump, are defending Biden despite a more serious allegation with far more evidence of wrongdoing. If Democrats didn't have double standard, they wouldn't have standards at all.
NYT
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A never great News Agency has become a shadow of their former self: admittedly biased by their own Ombudsman and editors, as well as exposed confessions. They still have occasionally good content, but that can't make up for their more frequent bad, or their willingness to deceive, commit lies of omission, or present things in a biased way. (Never trusting their readership with the whole truth). More than that, some insist on idol worship for what they publish, and abject denial of their obvious and omitted bias: and that fuels the backlash against them.