Biden did a rape and no one gives a shit. She even reported it to the cops. Is this rape culture?
Interesting point. Shame Peach couldn't make it herself. ; )
*meditates in the peaceful silence of her upvote*
While it has no bearing on my prior post, since my point (as I mentioned before) was not a lack of bias, but the comedic absurdity of using MLK as a banner of it, your subject is worth a tangent in it's own right.
In general, I think this incident is a test of integrity and it's largely going to fail. However, the conclusions drawn from that are not to be taken without context. On a personal note, the first thought that comes to mind is that frankly, I've hardly heard two words about Biden since the late primaries that weren't essentially "he's a creepy old man who touches young girls". lol It even seems to me to get far more attention than his troubling political background. Now this may or may not have something to do with the circles I socialize with, but that's difficult to say, as I'm also not especially entrenched in the right. I know several democrats who, despite vehemently wanting Trump out of office, are refusing to cast their vote for Biden next fall expressly because of his behavior with women, and I expect to see many more as attention on this issue will no doubt escalate exponentially throughout campaign season. Hell, I myself rolled in my quarantine grave when he was chosen as the candidate for exactly that reason, I've been watching this shitstorm inch it's way towards the fan for months now. But to be fair, let's talk about that inching. Because I do agree that the speed has been unseemly for what dares to call itself a "civilized society".
First off, her going to the police is something of a moot point. It was done this April, obviously well past the statute of limitations, there's not really anything they can do for her. If your point is credibility of the claim, it would make more sense had she gone to them twentyseven years ago when this occurred. That is, if you even prescribe to the idea that trusting the police to handle a rape case, something they have a downright horrendous track record of even ignoring him being a rich white man, is any evidence of a woman's seriousness about her allegations. Personally, I don't. I think it's a pretty meaningless aside either way.
That out of the way, let's talk about the actual speed of progress comparative to the standard. Now let's be generous to your point, and go to imaginationland for a moment where the current news is not being dominated by Black Lives Matter and the Coronavirus pandemic, eclipsing nearly all other stories in US media. Alongside police response, rape cases, if bothered to be looked into at all, are often achingly slow. And even in non-high-profile cases, usually draw contention, as it tends to be a he-said-she-said situation. There have been questions raised about the legitimacy of her evidence, but it's far too soon for me (or anyone else) to draw an opinion on that, given his behavior alone I certainly wouldn't put it past him, the guy is obviously a creep, but above all, I believe it to be largely irrelevant to the issue of media coverage, as unlike a long-dead civil rights hero who can't defend himself and an allegation that didn't come from the victim herself, even a dubious case ought to be reported on when it concerns a currently running presidential candidate. But it has been. This has been reported on by news outlets from ABC to BBC to CNN to Fox to NBC to MSNBC to CBS to PBS to The New York Times to Business Insider to The Washington Post to The Economist to The Guardian. Need I go on? Because I can. In fact, it only took about two weeks from her very first public statement on the assault in late March for it to start being run by major news outlets. And as it happens, the story was broken, as was the Larry King update, by traditionally left-leaning news outlets.
But there definitely is a more interesting question lying within, which is why she hasn't been booked for more TV interviews, and generally covered more extensively by mainstream television news. One factor is that she's turned several down. According to her, the initial reporters showing interest were those on both the far left and the far right, and Reade claimed she "didn't want to be pigeonholed as either a progressive or a Trump supporter" and was therefore waiting for an offer from a more moderate news outlet. Sadly that offer doesn't seem to have come. The New York Times suggested that with the relative newness of the story, the major, mainstream TV news outlets still have a window of time to give a more active approach to the story, but raises valid concerns that they haven't yet. Keep in mind however, this is a handful of outlets, as the more opinionated on both sides have already made offers, as have smaller more independent news outlets, and even those several mainstream moderate or general-left outlets have mostly just been gun-shy of a TV interview while simultaneously reporting on the story independently of one and online, which is increasingly their bread and butter, as opposed to the flagrant repression of information this might have constituted in a time before the explosion of the internet when TV was the lifeblood of news. Though this is now me being generous to my own point, as some amount of bias can obviously be assumed when a news station would rather print the story than air it and doesn't bring the victim on for a quick profit spectacle, as they tend to do. Even some of those outlet's reporters have given their input independently, such as an NBC reporter who told the NY Times in reference to TV coverage of the story comparative to a similar case from the 90's that "Many things have damaged the credibility of the mainstream media, but the obvious double standard in coverage of sexual misconduct allegations against politicians is high on the list". By precedent, coverage often takes a lawyer and a PR manager to push it, whereas Reade initially only made a few tweets and calls herself. Is this a valid excuse? No. Is it a massive cover-up designed only to protect one particular man? Also no. What we really seem to be looking at is a small handful of men in suits working for a small handful of companies, who won't give their reporters the green light book a controversial interview to draw more attention to a story they've technically already covered, just not enough. Ie major television news outlets are bitches to their ratings. WOAH. WHO KNEW? The fact is, overall, this story has already more than gotten around, largely thanks to the integrity of print and digital outlets, that TV news is increasingly lacking these days. Either way, it's not fringe information.
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