Watching the last few minutes of Chris Hayes and trying not to vomit.

[DeterDeter]

84. I've tried to give journalists the benefit of the doubt

that they are not acting on bad faith. While Chris Hayes is obviously all in for Bernie, I will try to give him the benefit of the doubt too, but I feel like the media also has an obligation to report on some aspects of the account that are the most problematic, and I have not seen a lot of that. I think that many are uncomfortable with the idea of seeming to smear a woman-in some cases, it ends up being a rather performative display of lending more credibility to the charges than I feel like they deserve. And then some (yes, in left wing media like the Intercept and Current Affairs) are absolutely acting on bath faith with this, and have shown themselves to be actively manipulating things behind the scenes-Current Affairs reporter admitting to advising Tara and her brother who not to speak to/return comments to, talking to the brother before his story "clean up"-, etc. These are the people who are high on their own supply and clearly think that this is their chance to get Bernie in. Here are the things that I think the media who is trying to act in good faith should be clear about:

1.) The Biden camp has denied it, and has welcomed it to be investigated.

2.) The changed story from last year-Tara claims that she tried to get further into it with the newspaper and was "shut down"-however, don't reporters have an obligation to mention that she had said last year "I want to emphasize that it's not Biden himself", it's his staff, that this wasn't a story about sexual misconduct, and that she didn't consider the shoulder touching to be sexual but compared it/the experience to being a "lamp" that gets thrown away? Victims can incrementally tell their stories, but that is sure of a heck different than emphasizing specifically that the problem was not with Biden himself.

3.) I'd be willing to give, for purposes of this, the benefit of the doubt that Tara did have a negative experience in the workplace that she considered to be sexual harassment. She says that she filed a complaint with the non-partisan senate personnel office at the time (about sexual harassment and not assault). The Times investigated and hasn't been able to find it. In order for a complaint to be "disappeared" like this, you have to take a big leap of faith and assume that a conspiracy had occurred to remove this complaint from the records that somehow escaped the VP investigative vetting. I don't think that people fully grasp how thorough the VP vetting that occurs is. Hilariously, Ben Smith is suggesting that Biden release his "personal papers" from his time in the Senate, as if that would contain anything about a complaint.

4.) One thing that really bothers me about all of the neighbor corroboration reporting from this week is that it is described as independent corroboration. This neighbor was not included on the original list of people who the Times/Post reached out to, provided by Tara. Business Insider describes it as the first case of independent corroboration, and then (under the article paywall mind you), the article itself with the neighbor is a little weird. When the reporter asks how it came up, she said "Tara called me and said 'This Joe Biden thing is coming up again', and I said 'oh, that. I had forgotten about it'!" That just comes off as exquisitely strange for one-so is the neighbor saying that she didn't think this "would be such a big thing". How in the hell could someone forget something like that? I'm not sure that Tara calling the neighbor and "reminding" her about the incident that the neighbor had "forgotten" about should be considered exactly as independent corroboration. Then again, why would the neighbor lie? The neighbor says that she lives a quiet life. I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she can remember something that Tara told her about her time in DC, but I feel like you must literally suspend disbelief to "forget" about something like that when Joe Biden has been VP for eight years.

5.) Do reporters have an obligation to report that (not only does she seem to be a mere fan/supporter of Bernie) she appears to be a Bernie SUPER-fan? They sure seem to want to emphasize that the neighbor says that she will vote for Biden. Supporting Bernie does not make her story untrue, but it does seem a little strange to claim that you get your only news from your son and David Sirota. Furthermore, do reporters have an obligation to report on the "tick tock" tweet to Ryan Grim of the Intercept? Left wing Bernie twitter has been an ugly place. I will not say that it is representative of all of Bernie supporters of course, but his supporters literally had a different smear about Biden each week. He had dementia. He was sun downing. He secretly had COVID. He was too unhealthy to stand up at the debate. These were things that were repeated by David Sirota, who Tara supposedly "got all her news" from. This was a world that Tara must have been entrenched in. This does not mean that her account is untrue, but I think that it should be considered and disclosed.