The Media Research Center has continued its obsession with Tara Reade, the woman who’s accusing Joe Biden of sexual misconduct — it has referenced her in 85 items as of this writing. The MRC has relentlessly pushed Reade’s alleged credibility, attacked anyone who questioned said credibility or dared to say anything nice about Biden and even did lame “studies” on coverage — most ludicrously complaining that news channels (excluding Fox News, natch) covered Vice President Mike Pence’s potentially dangerous gaffe of refusing to wear a face mask while visiting the Mayo Clinic than the Reade allegations.
This, of course, has nothing to do with “media research” and everything to do about partisan politics. The MRC cares nothing about the well-being of Reade; since it’s an arm of President Trump’s re-election campaign, it cares only about hurting Trump’s opponent, Biden.
This was further proved last year, when it treated similar allegations against President Trump much differently.
As we documented, the MRC repeated attacked and denigrated E.Jean Carroll after she accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. Let’s count the ways the MRC’s double standard has shown itself:
- One MRC writer declared that alleged sexual assaulters should be condemned only after they have been “proven guilty in a court of law” and not “before angry mobs form to declare them guilty in the court of public opinion” — a defense it has never offered to Biden.
- It sought to discredit Carroll by playing up allegedly “bizarre statements” while declaring about Reade’s bizarre statements, such as an essay praising Russian leader Vladimir Putin, that “weird ideas don’t negate serious accusations.”
- It attacked Carroll’s story as “scatterbrained” even though Reade has not been consistent in her accusations.
- It bashed media outlets for not exhibiting skepticism about Carroll’s accusation, even as it has demonstrated no skepticism whatsoever about Reade’s allegations.
We can go back even farther to 2016, when Trump was caught on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape bragging about what Biden has been accused of doing. When that tape came out, MRC chief Brent Bozell was not concerned that his favored presidential candidate was a sex-crazed pervert; he blamed the media for its release in a full-frothing rant that accused the media of colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and demanded they apologize to Trump for the tape’s release.
By contrast, the MRC has not accused Reade of having political motivations, even though her lawyer has donated to Trump.
You may also recall that the MRC was largely AWOL when Fox News personalities and its founder and longtime leader, Roger Ailes, were accused of systematic sexual harassment, while it obsessed over sexual harassment scandals elsewhere.
Again: The MRC doesn’t give a damn about Tara Reade — to them, she’s only a toll to harm Biden. If the MRC cared about women, it would have treated Carroll the same way it’s treating Reade.