Weeks have passed since former Senate staffer Tara Reade accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Her story alleging that the then-senator pushed her up against a wall and forcibly penetrated her with his hand in 1993 has been completely ignored by CNN, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and most other major liberal national media outlets. Only fringe left-wing sites and conservative media outlets have dedicated any attention to Reade’s story, even though Biden himself has previously embraced the standard that all female accusers should be heard.
Writing for Salon, left-wing journalist Amanda Marcotte tried to pull a blindfold over her audience’s eyes with an article attempting to explain away this double-standard.
Here’s some of what she wrote:
“The timeline shows that Reade’s involvement in the online world of Bernie fandom coincided with her escalation of accusations against Biden. To be clear, this does not mean she’s lying. But taken along with the other discrepancies in Reade’s accounts — which are also, on their own, not reasons to discredit her — it’s enough to make publications take a slow and careful approach to amplifying this story.
“In light of these details, Salon concludes that mainstream outlets who are being criticized for not writing about Reade’s allegations probably aren’t making that choice because they’re covering up for Joe Biden. What’s more likely driving the silence — so far — is a genuine reluctance to dive into a story that contains such a high number of complicating factors and proves difficult to pin down, especially with the coronavirus emergency dominating the news cycle.”
That’s interesting — suddenly, responsible liberal journalists don’t report on accusations that have “major political implications” or “confusing twists that could be interpreted as red flags.” At least, not when it’s a Democrat that’s accused!
Because when it was Brett Kavanaugh, there weren’t any “political implications”? It’s not as if the account of his accuser, Professor Christine Blasey-Ford, almost derailed his nomination to the highest court in the land or anything.
Marcotte’s standard appears to be malleable to the point of nonexistence. Blasey-Ford’s story, after all, had its own red flags — no contemporaneous corroboration, no evidence, no recollection of the date or location of the alleged assault. That all seemed relevant at the time. It seemed to be a red flag when the witness Blasey-Ford said could back up her story had no recollection of it. In contrast, even Salon admits that Reade has two contemporary corroborating witnesses, whom journalists confirmed were told about the assault at the time Reade says it happened. So if Reade is just putting this on to help Bernie Sanders, she must have been plotting to help him for the better part of three decades.
Biden, just like Kavanaugh, deserves due process in the court of public opinion and the legal presumption of innocence. But it isn’t too much to demand a bit of intellectual honesty and consistency in how the media treats accusations against political figures. To read Marcotte’s sophomoric dismissal of this allegation as a news story is to understand the liberal media’s double standard.
