Without a shred of evidence that Brett Kavanaugh had ever even met Christine Blasey Ford, the news media decided the then-Supreme Court nominee was guilty of an unconscionable sexual assault four decades ago. Kavanaugh went overnight from being understood to be a consummate legal star, women’s advocate, and faithful family man, to being depicted as a sleazy drunkard and would-be rapist.
Now, with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, facing an accusation of sexual assault, the media are demanding that an accusation against a leading public figure should be supported by far more evidence.
By any objective standard, the accusation from former Senate staffer Tara Reade that Biden sexually assaulted her is stronger than Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh. This does not mean Biden is guilty and should be disqualified. But it does highlight the grave injustice done to Kavanaugh.
Ford did not tell anyone her story until nearly 30 years later, in a private therapy session. Her story changed a lot over time — from the number of people at the party where the attack allegedly took place, to the year it occurred. None of the people Ford said were there could recall the party, and even her best friend at the time, Leland Keyser, said she did not have “any confidence” in the story. To this day, there is no evidence Kavanaugh and Ford ever met.
In contrast, it has been confirmed that Reade was a member of Biden’s staff in 1993, at the time she claims he pushed her against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers. Several people have said Reade told them at the time of the incident or within a few years of it. In an interview, Reade said she told her mother (now deceased) about the incident at the time and that her mother called Larry King Live anonymously to mention it.
Sure enough, in a video clip of the show from just after Reade left Biden’s office, a woman claims that her daughter recently had “problems” with a senator she worked for but was reluctant to go to the press. Because the call was anonymous and the caller did not mention Biden by name, this should prompt caution, but it cannot be dismissed. Business Insider subsequently spoke to Reade’s former neighbor, who said Reade discussed in detail her allegations against Biden in the mid-1990s.
Ford’s accusation blew up the entire confirmation process of a Supreme Court nominee. Media abandoned all standards to elevate Ford and portray the story as part of a pattern of behavior by Kavanaugh, who, by all accounts, had an impeccable reputation throughout his long professional career.
NBC ran an entire interview allowing Julie Swetnick, a client of disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti, to accuse Kavanaugh of participating in gang rape without finding a shred of corroboration for her claims. The news organization also ran a story claiming that a classmate corroborated Ford’s story, relying solely on a since-deleted Facebook post by a woman who later admitted she was lying. Any crackpot was turned into pseudo-corroboration by the media looking to paint the Ford allegation as just a single point in a long pattern of predation. Senators interrogated Kavanaugh about jokes in his high school yearbook. The New York Times ran an investigative piece about a 1985 incident in which, as a college junior, Kavanaugh was accused of throwing ice in a bar.
It would be naive to expect Biden to have received the same overtly bad-faith media coverage. But it is especially egregious that the story has received little or no coverage in the press. Biden and his campaign surrogates have repeatedly gone on television without being asked a single question about the accusation.
Reade made her first public allegation of outright assault on a March 25 podcast. The New York Times didn’t so much as publish the name Tara Reade until 19 days later. Asked about why Kavanaugh was treated differently, Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, said, “Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way.” As if a former vice president who served in the Senate for 36 years and who will be the Democratic presidential nominee is somehow a private figure!
Even when the New York Times did cover the allegation, its news report read more like an attempted exoneration.
“No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable,” the New York Times wrote in a segment deleted in a stealth edit after pressure from the Biden campaign.
Biden has been on camera for his entire adult life, repeatedly sniffing and kissing and invading people’s personal space, but this is not recognized by the news media as material evidence of a pattern of behavior.
After a blockbuster report that Reade had told her former neighbor her story about Biden, the Washington Post twisted itself into a pretzel, headlining its article summarizing Reade’s increased credibility “Trump allies highlight new claims regarding allegations against Biden.” The tweet from the official Post Politics account pushing the story read, “Developments in allegations against Biden amplify efforts to question his behavior.”
The Washington Post was scooped by weeks on the Reade story, but it jumped the gun to break the Ford story, publishing her allegations without a single contemporaneously corroborating witness on the record.
Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus, who wrote an entire book indicting Kavanaugh, is sure that despite significantly more evidence backing Reade’s claim, Biden is innocent. Why? Her “gut” told her so.
CNN sat on the Reade story for weeks after Reade made her initial allegation on March 25, first framing the story as “Democrats grapple with questions about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden” on April 17. To date, CNN has written only three pieces devoted to Reade’s allegation in the more than four weeks. By contrast, it published more than 700 articles on the Kavanaugh allegations in the same span of time.
At this point, there is insufficient evidence to say Biden is guilty. But there is abundant evidence that the news media are guilty of an appalling double standard. Considering their unwillingness to apply their standards to Biden, they owe Kavanaugh an apology.
