Republicans should stop ragging on the New York Times for a bit. If Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court, the GOP will owe it, in part, to that Grey Lady.
Hoping that good journalism will drive out bad, the right will rely on the New York Times reporting to dispute the New Yorker story about allegations that paint Kavanaugh as a sexual deviant. And it is a strong argument if anyone will pay attention to the reported facts.
Republicans were blindsided Sunday night when Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer published a story in the New Yorker alleging that a drunken Kavanaugh exposed himself to a similarly drunk co-ed named Deborah Ramirez during their freshman year at Yale. The story is horrific and the allegations serious. The evidence, however, is nonexistent.
[Related: Ronan Farrow on Kavanaugh accuser: ‘Extremely typical’ for victims to forget, then remember]
The New Yorker couldn’t even confirm Kavanaugh was at the party where the alleged incident took place. But they did find six former students—two alleged male witnesses, the wife of a third, and three other undergraduates—who all deny that anything ever happened. Somehow, sans evidence, the New Yorker decided to run the Ramirez story anyway.
But the New York Times did not.
Republicans needed an answer to questions about the allegations and they needed one fast Sunday night. Kavanaugh faces not one but two he-said-she-said situations which create a moral cloud of doubt above his nomination. Luckily for them this time, the editorial standards of the New York Times have come to his rescue.
The New York Times looked into the Ramirez story but they never published. Why? Because they weren’t able to find a single person who could corroborate the account. They couldn’t find anyone who would confirm the accuser’s story:
If the New York Times didn’t find this accusation credible, why should anyone else? It is a powerful talking point for Republicans, magnified by the fact that the New Yorker story is a serious miscarriage of journalistic ethics. It is another episode of industry self-policing, and another reason why Republicans should think twice before slamming all journalists as #FakeNews.
The New York Times may have saved Kavanaugh’s nomination.
