Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) issued a statement Sunday in response to the publication of reporting from the New York Times regarding the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
“Brett Kavanaugh should never have been confirmed to the Supreme Court. It was plain to me and many others at the time that the FBI ‘investigation’ into the serious, corroborated allegations of sexual assault by Justice Kavanaugh was a sham. New reporting from the New York Times further proves it.
“In normal times, I would call on the Department of Justice’s Inspector General to fully investigate the FBI’s failures in this matter. But these are not normal times. The House Judiciary Committee should immediately begin an impeachment inquiry to determine whether Justice Kavanaugh lied to Congress and why the FBI wasn’t permitted to investigate all credible allegations against him.”
A word repeated twice in Hirono’s statement is worth noting: Allegations.
And it’s also worth noting how and where the Times played this story, and why its editors quickly made changes to the online story.
We all know we live in a world where allegations and nothing more are needed to attack a person and call for impeachment. It’s no longer necessary they be charged with anything. No longer necessary they be found guilty of anything. No longer necessary the accuser have any actual proof. An allegation is good enough for most of us. It just needs to be an allegation and some newspapers and even elected officials who should know better quickly jump in because it serves their politics.
But that’s old news. We’re not telling you anything new. The days of innocent until proven guilty are in the past. By some standards, you are now guilty if someone accuses you of something. Yes, we realize not every criminal will leave behind a trail of evidence and sometimes we will only have the word of a victim that shouldn’t be discounted. When multiple victims share a similar story, that must be taken into account.
Let’s move on to what the Associated Press reported regarding the New York Times story and some curious changes made to it and how it was presented. And we’re reporting this on the opinion page, to be consistent with the Times.
“Between an offensive tweet and a significant revision, the New York Times’ handling of a new sexual misconduct allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh attracted almost as much attention as the accusation itself,” the AP reported.
The revelation that led several Democratic presidential contenders to call for Kavanaugh’s impeachment came in the 11th paragraph of a story labeled “news analysis” that ran in the Sunday opinion section.
The story is based on an upcoming book by Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation,” about the junior justice’s brutal confirmation battle last year, the AP reported.
Headlined “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not,” the story was primarily about Deborah Ramirez, a Connecticut woman who alleged that Kavanaugh, as a freshman at Yale in 1983, had pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims.
Yet the authors said they’d uncovered a similar story involving Kavanaugh at another freshman year party, where he allegedly exposed himself and friends pushed his penis into the hands of a female student. The story said former classmate Max Stier reported the incident to the FBI and senators as Kavanaugh’s nomination was being discussed, but said Stier would not discuss it with the authors. Kavanaugh would not comment on the story, a court spokeswoman said on Monday.
“After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident. While an editor’s note pointed out the revision, it did not say why those facts had been left out in the first place. A Times spokeswoman said no one was available for an interview on Monday,” the AP reported.
To be clear, according to the Times, the woman “supposedly involved in the incident” didn’t want to be interviewed and friends said she doesn’t even recall it. And yes, why did the Times leave that key piece of information out of its initial coverage?
The failure to initially report that the woman did not remember the alleged incident “is one of the worst cases of journalistic malpractice in recent memory,” John McCormack wrote in the conservative magazine National Review.
The Washington Post, detailing its own decision on the story, called into question the Times’ decision to run with the accusation in the first place.
The Post said that last year it had independently confirmed that lawmakers and authorities knew of the second accusation against Kavanaugh, but did not write about it because the woman involved would not comment and the alleged witnesses were not identified.
The book’s authors wrote that they had corroborated the second misconduct allegation with two officials who said they had communicated with Stier. The newspaper did not identify them.
Yes, more unidentified sources, which has become common practice at many papers, including the New York Times. It’s much easier to toss out accusations with unnamed sources.
Placement of the accusation in the midst of an opinion section piece struck many in the journalism community as odd, the AP reported.
“How is this not a front-page story?” wrote Tom Jones of the journalism think tank the Poynter Institute.
In a statement, the Times said the opinion section frequently runs excerpts of books produced by the newspaper’s reporters. The new accusations were uncovered during the authors’ reporting process for the book, which is why they had not appeared in the newspaper before.
Still, this doesn’t explain why the new accusations weren’t pointed out to editors and given more prominence in news pages. Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University journalism professor, suggested bureaucratic inertia might partly explain it — since it had been determined that the piece would run in the opinion section, no one stepped forward to question that.
“There have been a number of decisions on this that strike me as dubious,” Gitlin said in an interview.
Let’s go beyond story revisions.
The Times also apologized for an offensive tweet sent out by the opinion section advertising its initial story. The tweet said: “Having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun. But when Brett Kavanaugh did it to her, Deborah Ramirez says, it confirmed that she didn’t belong at Yale University in the first place.”
The Times deleted the tweet and said it was “clearly inappropriate and offensive” and was looking into how it was sent.
A revision to the story. Left-out information. An apology. Unnamed sources. Not exactly a proud day for the New York Times.
And yet, sadly, Hirono believes the Times coverage corroborates allegations of sexual assault: “New reporting from the New York Times further proves it,” said her press release.
Actually, it proves nothing.
But that’s not important. At least, not anymore.
