- The Washington Times - Wednesday, April 29, 2020

The news media continues to skim over a report that suggests presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden was guilty of sexual misconduct with an female aide when he was still serving as U.S. senator from Delaware. Now there are numbers.

“It’s been more than a month since ex-staffer Tara Reade publicly accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, but you probably would have no idea if you relied on ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC or PBS for your news. Since March 25, those networks either completely ignored or barely mentioned the scandal,” reports Scott Whitlock, a senior analyst for the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog which recently discovered and released a 1993 video which appears to corroborate Ms. Reade’s accusations.

“Even the liberal New York Times and Washington Post have published lengthy stories investigating the charges, yet ABC and NBC haven’t spent even a single second on the story. CBS has devoted a paltry 63 seconds, while PBS gave it a mere seven minutes. The all-day news networks CNN and MSNBC should have posted significantly higher totals, but they haven’t: MSNBC managed only four and a half minutes in mid-April,” Mr. Whitlock said.

CNN only emerged from a complete blackout of the story until the video evidence went public.

ABC, NBC, CNN and MSNBC each hosted Mr. Biden in recent weeks; they asked Mr. Biden 77 questions. But not one covered the misconduct accusations, Mr. Whitlock said.

ABC and NBC have still refused to cover the story. CNN, which had been conducting a similar blackout, finally gave in and reported on it Saturday.

“The mantra of the many in the #MeToo movement is to ’believe all women.’ Journalists, at the very least, should give a fair hearing to serious accusations against any major public figure. With the case of Tara Reade, the press has failed. Instead of listening to women, they have ignored one woman raising inconvenient accusations against the Democratic Party’s hope to defeat Donald Trump,” Mr. Whitlock said.

• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.

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