Another day, another careless media misstep.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., did not dodge questions Thursday regarding allegations his Democratic colleague Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., sexually assaulted a woman in 2006.
Rather, Whitehouse appears to have made an innocuous and lighthearted comment to a group of journalists in the Capitol, which an ABC News reporter badly misrepresented later in her retelling on social media.
Sen. Whitehouse, “tells reporters: ‘You guys need to find something more interesting” when asked about Franken allegations,’” ABC’s Mariam Khan tweeted.
Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden alleged Thursday that Franken sexually assaulted her during a USO tour in December 2006, kissing her against her will and pretending to grope her while she slept. Recalling a moment during a rehearsal for a skit that called for them to kiss, she wrote that Franken, “came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” she added. “I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.”
Given the seriousness of the charges, which Franken owned up to later Thursday afternoon, Whitehouse’s supposed dismissal came across as cowardly and insensitive.
Except he didn’t actually brush off questions about Franken’s sex scandal, as Khan clarified in a later tweet.
“I must clarify: it appears [Sen. Whitehouse] made this comment in passing before he was directly asked about the Franken allegations,” she tweeted.
That makes a pretty big difference.
As usual, the original, titillating tweet has been shared far more than the follow-up correction. Khan’s initial note defaming the Rhode Island senator, which she eventually deleted, was shared by more than 500 social media users. Her clarification has been shared only 134 times.
And that’s to say nothing of the justifiably angry Twitter mob that she set off after Whitehouse.
“Nah, dude. Nope,” said MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Commentary’s John Podhoretz added, “What a tower of moral authority.”
“Nope. That’s not how this works,” said BuzzFeed’s Kate Nocera.
Rewire’s Marc Felitte said elsewhere, “Circling the wagons, real classy.”
“This shitty response doesn’t cut it anymore,” said Refinery29’s Andrea González-Ramírez.
The only problem with these responses is that they’re predicated on the premise that the senator casually dismissed the sexual assault allegations, which he didn’t, according to the same reporter who claimed originally that he did.
Good on Khan for deleting the original tweet (as should be the standard operating procedure in these instances). But shame on her for screwing it up so badly in the first place. The more we see these sort of Twitter-fueled missteps, the more we’re coming around to the idea that social media is bad for journalism.
