I'm listening to @TVietor08's @PodSaveAmerica interview with @AmandaMarcotte and annotating the errors and/ or distortions in real time. #1. Reade didn't work for Biden "for a few months" as Marcotte claims but for 9 months. (1/?) soundcloud.com/katie-halper/t…
#2. I interviewed Reade on my own podcast, the Katie Halper Show. (2/?)
#3. Also, she worked for him not just "in 1993" but in 1992 and 1993. (3/?)
#4. Marcotte says, "her discussing that didn't really rise to anyone's attention. It was covered in a local newspaper in California." In fact, it was covered by @NYMag @TheCut, @FAIRmediawatch, @WeAreMel @dailydot,& , not surprisingly, Right Wing outlets like @dcexaminer (4/?)
It's just kind of incredible something so disprovable would be said. #5. She says Reade made an allegation that "Biden pushed her up against a wall and digitally penetrated her. That's kind of the sum of it. There's not a whole lot more to the accusation." In fact, there is (5/?)
"a whole lot more of it," namely, that he said to her "come on man! I thought you liked me." That he then said to her, when she looked upset, "You're nothing to me." That she was retaliated against, something which @nytimes piece basically confirmed when 2 interns recalled (6/?)
she was abruptly removed of her duties. #7. Then, tho neither Marcotte nor Vietor has quoted a single word Tara said or played a clip from my interview/@democracynow's or @krystalball's interview w/ Tara, Vietor reads a long statement from Biden campaign. OK. but back to (7/?)
actual errors and mis-representations, as opposed to bias. I won't count that one. So, back to #7. Marcotte outrageously says "She claimed that she complained about it to multiple people. I got a hold of 2 of them and they said no." Who did Marcotte get a hold of? It sure (8/?)
as hell wasn't the people Tara said she told bc Marcotte complains that she wasn't able to reach them. She should ask the several other reporters who somehow did reach them. Imagine if someone told me they told people about an incident, told me the people they had told, I (9/?)
tried to reach them and then reached out to other random people whose identities I didn't even disclose and then tried to suggest the person who said this wasn't on the up and up? #11. Marcotte says Reade didn't tell the whole story of what happened to her bc she "got (10/?)
scared." Kind of weird to omit that she was upset bc she was almost immediately smeared as a Russian agent. Especially weird bc Marcotte repeats these smears in her piece. (11/?)
#12. Marcotte says Reade told her she complained to her supervisors about the harassment "so that I felt like precluded a paper trail. And we didn't really talk about a paper trail." If Marcotte listened to my interview with Reade, which she would have if she cared about (12/?)
her subject, she would've learned that Reade told me she both spoke to people and filed a paper in an office. #13. Vietor takes the time to quote the NY Times, which said, "The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden." Somehow, neither Marcotte nor Vietor (13/?)
followed this story enough to know that the Times, embarrassingly enough,stealth edited piece, which originally read, "The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable." (14/?)
Anyone paying attention to this story saw the side by side screenshots of how the Times rewrote it. #14 Vietor says he spoke to journalists who were working on the story for a year. Those journalists STOPPED working on this story until Grim wrote his piece & I interviewed (15/?)
her. In fact, some of the places that spoke to Tara last year have assigned new reporters to the story. That's how not working on her story the reporters were. Some reporters were "mad" that Tara hadn't told them everything & some felt guilty they had stopped working on it (16/?)
Vietor asks Marcotte "can you tell us why it took so long" to cover this story. This is the question everyone is asking but they're not actually asking it. They're offering it so people like Marcotte can say "it totally makes sense that they didn't cover it." She & others (17/?)
are trying to justify media's silence bc it's been so deafening people have to be given an answer. Marcotte answers that the reason she was able to cover this story more quickly than the major outlets was "perversely bc Salon doesn't have a lot of resources. It's just me (18/?)
and my editors. I don't have a research assistant. And what I quickly released after talking to Tara, after talking to the folks at Times Up, and the Biden campaign, it became pretty clear that the chances of us finding out what happened to her especially with our limited (19/?)
resources were pretty low..." Pause here. This framing of Salon being a scrappy operation with Marcotte doing all the phone calls herself, as she says during this Pod Save interview, is pretty different from how the piece is presented in her actual article at Salon where (20/?)
she refers to "Salon" in 3rd person. So, in the sub-headline (right above the correction Marcotte had to issue) it reads, "Salon untangles fact from fiction in the politicized fall-out," not "I untangle." The piece determines "in light of these details, Salon concludes..." (21/?)
as if she's working with the investigative reporting team featured in Spotlight. This isn't really a mistake in the way the other things, so we don't have to count it. So, we're back at #14. So #14. Marcotte claims that given the limited resources at Salon, she refocused (22/?)
on "how much I could debunk the conspiracy theories that Biden supporters and Sanders supporters were pushing." As Krystal Ball points out. Marcotte uses false equivalencies when it comes to conspiracy theories. She equates the claim that "Time's Up refuse[d] to help... (23/?)
Reade as a political favor to Biden," with the claim that Reade is a Russian agent and with the claim that Reade is a woman in a Dr. Phil video she is absolutely not. Marcotte doesn't debunk the claim abt Times Up. She misrepresents them. They told Reade & Grim on the (24/?)
record that they wouldn't take on Reade bc she was accusing Biden. Marcotte claimed it had something to do with Reade's support of Bernie (who, by the way, she didn't initially support. She supported Warren and then went with the guy who wasn't her alleged sexual assaulter (25/?)
) which just contradicts what TimesUp said so either Times Up is wrong and Marcotte is right or Times Up is lying or Marcotte is. #15. Marcotte claims that WaPo & NY Times, though they have more resources than she does, kept hitting their heads up with the fact that "it's (26/?)
very difficult to figure out what happened in 1993 between Reade and BIden and I think what happened is that they spent more & more time trying to get all the facts in order & do all the interviews... to see if there was anything that could tell us the truth one way or (27/?)
another. And that just takes time. It's a lot of hurry up and wait. You file a FOIA request, you make phone calls. You ask everyone that you can find." There are two issues here. To be fair, I will count them as one. #15a. Marcotte, NY Times, & WaPo have a demonstrable (28/?)
double standard when it comes to truth between Reade and Biden and truth between Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh. (To be clear, Kavanaugh should not be on the Supreme Court & is an odious person on a political & personal level while Biden is not a monster through & through (29/?)
as even Reade acknowledges.) #15B If the Times or WaPo or anyone else actually filed a FOIA, they were certainly not waiting to hear back before reporting on this. They clearly didn't produce any documents through FOIA, or they would have mentioned them, and the average (30/?)
FOIA request takes several months and in the middle of a pandemic, more. So that's no excuse. #16. If this were about responsible and thorough journalism, the NY Times and WaPo and anyone else would have asked the one question that anyone interested in the truth would ask (31/?)
which is DO YOU DENY THAT, AS THE TWO THEN INTERNS HAVE SAID, READE WAS STRIPPED OF HER DUTIES ABRUPTLY? If they say no, we don't deny that, then you ask WHY WAS SHE STRIPPED OF HER DUTIES? If they say why, you report that. If they don't deny it or don't respond or say no (32/?)
comment, you report that. #17. Marcotte then asks Vietor, "Does that make sense?" to which he responds (after a few moments) "yeah that makes total sense. I think that just speaks to how challenging it is to figure out anything that happened a long time ago. The challenge (33?/?)
of reporting generally, takes a lot of time. People were being conscientious." I don't even know what to say about this except that it sounds like it comes from a Mayor Pete speech and, again, this isn't conscientious reporting. This is agenda-driven reporting or people (24/?)
would be asking Biden campaign things like "why isn't Biden denying this himself?" and "why was she stripped of her duties?" But then, the moment we've all been waiting for.. AND NOW I HAVE TO PAUSE TO EAT DINNER. I'M SORRY. THE AUDIO I WAS LISTENING TO WAS 20 MINUTES (25/?)
LONG. BUT I STILL HAVE 6 MINUTES. FOR NOW, YOU CAN ENJOY THE 16 THINGS I'VE FOUND SO FAR.
#18. The moment we've all been waiting for... Vietor says, just like everyone else except the Krassenstein brothers because they don't get that red-baiting is embarrassing, that he, of course, doesn't care about Reade's Russia statements but then spends tons of time on them...
