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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]What I want to know is why the mainstream media treated Reade with kid gloves.

I'm guessing this was actually out of respect for women. Because the Post and The NY Times didn't want to rule out any woman's story without waiting longer for the facts. They wanted to give their readers a chance to "listen to women" instead of shutting Reade down by exposing what they already knew.[/b]

Much of what's below has been known for at least a week among journalists familiar with the story. Fox undoubtedly knew. Fox, of course, continued to promote Reade's story hysterically (and the stupid Eva Murry claim on Saturday).

The NY Times or the WaPo could easily have put all this together for their readers, but they didn't; instead, the mainstream media sat on their hands.
- AP contacted 21 of Reade’s Senate coworkers, including 3 Reade said she told about the abuse, several weeks ago. All 21 denied knowing about it and the chief of staff issued a sharp rebuttal.

- WaPo contract all 5 of the people Reade said could corroborate her story, again weeks ago. 3 denied knowing about it, one confirmed shoulder rubbing but not the fingers, and the fifth confirmed but refused to go on the record.

- Reade's brother initially said he only knew about the shoulder massage. He later changed his story.

- Reade's own changing story, her baffling tweets of support for Biden's role championing women, et cetera.

- A grab bag of Reade's history of multiple sexual and racial (against her as a white woman) harassment claims, defrauding the horse charity, multiple GoFundMes she set up to grift money, lying during her bankruptcy filing.  And a variety of bizarre and unnecessary lies (her journalist/PR father was a "powerful defense contractor" and she was a junior Olympic skier in an era when that didn't exist).

To me, the "liberal mainstream media" LISTENED TO WOMEN by holding all this information back instead of publishing a devastating piece. Fox gets no credit, in my book, for shrieking about Reade when they undoubtedly knew all this too.  [/quote]

No, the reason is that the #MeToo movement has gotten so extreme that anyone that doesn't reflexively believe any woman's accusation 100% without question and instantly condemn the man is subjected to scathing backlash.  So, they held off, and researched the topic to find the inconsistencies, the issues and concerns and then reported her accusation with full disclosure to show that her claim was very problematic.

And even then, with all the details, there was still a huge backlash, and many people who criticized all of the objections saying that people should just believe Reade and that Biden needed to be  removed as the Democratic presidential candidate only on his very problematic allegation.  A case that would not even be close to admissible in court was being tried in the court of public opinion and half of the jury refused to read all of the issues and just automatically condemned him.

That's why #BelieveAllWomen is problematic.  While false accusations are much smaller and less significant in general, when it comes to public figures, false accusations are significantly more likely to happen and we can't believe all women when it comes to public figures.  Such allegations have to be vetted first and this was failed terribly.  Fortunately the media was a little more conscientious than the mob.[/quote]

+1,000,000
Well said.  Hopefully the next time there is an accusation of sexual assault with little to no corroboration, it will be investigated thoroughly before the usual nitwits jump on the "he's guilty!!" bandwagon.  Needless to say, most of the nitwits in question only do this if the accused is a Republican.  [/quote]

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