There is no substantiated evidence of any sexual misbehavior by Brett Kavanaugh at any point in his entire life. Several shaky claims have been made along these lines, but all of them are badly undercut by available evidence. None of them is more likely than not to be true.
Yet in a casual radio interview this morning, New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, gave an unintentionally revealing report about her approach to the story. Following Christine Blasey Ford’s hard-to-believe testimony, which was undercut by all witnesses she placed at the party in question, including a lifelong friend of hers, and following Deborah Ramirez’s hard-to-believe story, which she herself admitted being uncertain about, Pogrebin obviously became subjected to confirmation bias. She had a narrative in mind and she pushed and pulled her writing to fit it.
Pogrebin is at the center of a discussion of gross journalistic malpractice after publishing a story Saturday night with colleague Kate Kelly that failed to mention that a woman who, according to a man named Max Stier, had Kavanaugh’s penis pressed into her hand at a campus party by multiple friends of his has said she recalls no such incident. That woman has also declined to talk about the matter with reporters or officials. Why even publish Stier’s claim, which was discounted by Washington Post reporters who heard about it a year ago, that he witnessed such an incident during a Yale party in the 1980s? Because of the narrative, Pogrebin says. “We decided to go with it because obviously it is of a piece with a kind of behavior,” she said on WMAL. Pure confirmation bias.
Though the woman at the center of the story wants no part of it, Kelly and Pogrebin published her name anyway (in their book, albeit not in the Times). “You’re kind of directing attention at a victim and she’s gonna be besieged,” Pogrebin said on the radio show, in explaining why the Times piece left the name out. “Even if people can ultimately find her name, it’s not necessarily important to make it easier for them to do so.” Oh, so publishing her name in a book does not constitute making it too easy for people to find this private citizen? It’s a separate but serious scandal. This woman has been made a public figure in a national story without her consent. Even if she were the victim of sexual misconduct, the Times would ordinarily take steps to protect her identity. Yet she has made no claim along these lines, and Pogrebin and Kelly outed her anyway. Is there no respect for a woman’s privacy? Is every woman in America to think of herself as potential collateral damage should she ever cross paths with any Republican whom Times reporters later tried to take down?
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See Also:
(1) The New York Times Still Doesn’t Understand What It Did
(2) The alternative ‘facts’ of the Times’ Brett Kavanaugh story
(3) Why the Times bungled so badly in its latest Kavanaugh smear
(4) The Kavanaugh Clownshow Cavalcade
(5) Witnesses Defended Kavanaugh. NYT Authors Falsely Claimed They Were Silent
