NBC covered up for Harvey Weinstein; has now gone all-in on a porn lawyer’s dubious gang-rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh washex.am/2P5gzsD
NBC News has demonstrated repeatedly in recent days that no allegation of sexual misconduct is too absurd or dubious to get immediate wall-to-wall coverage from its biggest and best-paid personalities.
The total collapse of the network's editorial standards in pursuit of damning info about Kavanaugh is telling, considering that not long ago NBC set up major hurdles for the former reporter who exposed Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a real-life serial sexual predator.
Swetnick, who is being represented by celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti, has yet to produce a single witness to corroborate a story that implicates literally dozens of individuals and should have, if true, produced multiple witnesses and victims.
She also suffers from psychological problems, as it turns out, and Avenatti has recently admitted that Swetnick didn't actually witness Kavanaugh's alleged criminal behavior firsthand.
So naturally, NBC News gave her a plum spot in its evening prime-time lineup this week to repeat her unverified charges against the embattled Supreme Court nominee.
If you can believe it, Kate Snow began her Swetnick interview with a word of caution: “NBC News, for the record, has not been able to independently verify her claims. There are things she told us on camera that differ from her written statements last week."
An example of one of these differences would be Swetnick alleging in the affidavit that she witnessed Kavanaugh “spik[ing] the drinks of girls at house parties ... with grain alcohol and/or drugs” vs her alleging she only saw Kavanaugh handing out red Solo cups to girls.
There is no version of reality where the decision to air this interview conforms to journalistic ethics.
National Public Radio’s ethics handbook states simply that, “We should never be in the position of looking for corroboration after a report has been published or broadcast.”
The Society of Professional Journalists also states in its code of ethics that journalists should “verify information before releasing it.”
The New York Times’ Jessica Bennett, who reported sexual allegations leveled against playwright Israel Horovitz, explained at the time of her reporting that “each woman also had to be corroborated by at least two other sources.”
It’s funny how NBC’s standards have changed, and for whom. The fact that Kavanaugh is a conservative judge who might just turn the Supreme Court, and Weinstein is a major Democratic donor with deep ties to NBC Universal, couldn't have anything to do with it. Could it?
