Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Truest statement of the week

Late last week, Politico published an article that in the headline alone referred to Tara Reade as a “manipulative, deceitful, user” who “left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances.” It had all the framing of a bombshell report, and the dramatic intensity of an old-school TV detective slamming shut a case file. Yet the piece itself failed to deliver any evidence around Reade’s allegation of sexual assault against Joe Biden. Instead, it put another subject under the magnifying glass: Reade’s economic stability. The “aggrieved acquaintances” were but a handful of former landlords. The damning behavior behind the trumpeted claim of dishonesty and wrongdoing? Reade allegedly struggled to pay her rent, and sometimes she pleaded for her landlords’ sympathy.
This is not a bombshell report. Instead, the article is a smear job that digs up details from Reade’s personal life that are unrelated to her sexual assault allegations. This may not be so egregious as the defense attorney who puts an accuser’s sexual history or style of dress on trial, but it engages in the same kind of character assassination supported by the myth of the “perfect victim.” In this case, Reade’s economic class is Exhibit A.
Reporters have doggedly tried to corroborate Reade’s allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office. This is the critical task facing journalists reporting on sexual assault: knocking on doors, digging up documents, corroborating accounts, and asking oftentimes painful questions, all in service of responsibly detailing a sexual assault allegation. Reporters have, reasonably, approached this task from different angles: For example, PBS News Hour recently interviewed 74 former Biden staffers, finding that none reported personally experiencing sexual harassment or assault. However, the coverage also noted that these staffers’ “experiences do not disprove” Reade’s accusation.
The PBS News Hour article was centered around Reade’s allegation, though. The Politico report is not. It digs up a few landlords from Reade’s past, all but one of whom have bad things to say about their prior tenant. (The one landlord who calls Reade “a wonderful person” does not get prime placement in the piece.) There are allegations of missed rent payments, requests to borrow money, and pleas for sympathy. Around those concrete allegations of financial trouble—which are unrelated to one’s capacity to credibly make an allegation of sexual assault—are subjective character assessments from prior landlords, all of which relate to their financial interests.

-- Tracy Clark-Flory, "Tara Reade's Landlords Are Irrelevant" (JEZEBEL).