- By Arnav Sampigethaya
“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” - Malcolm X
By Saul Loeb
As I was catching up on the news this week, I read about sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden (North, 2020). This was shocking to me, not because of the allegations themselves but because of how underreported this was. Joe Biden is currently the frontrunner in the Democratic primaries. He’s set to stand against Donald Trump in one of the most consequential United States elections on the global scale. And yet, I’m sure that most people reading this article had no idea about these allegations.
By Max Whittaker for New York Times
Let’s dig deeper into the nature of the allegation. Tara Reade worked in Joe Biden’s Senate office in 1993 (Lerer & Ember, 2020). She claims that Biden pinned her against the wall and proceeded to sexually assault her. Joe Biden took about a month to respond to these allegations finally stating “I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago. They aren’t true. This never happened,”
By Jaquelyn Martin
This story must ring a bell for those who have closely followed American politics in the last few years. This case eerily rings similar to the Brett Kavanaugh allegations of 2018. Dr Christine Blasey Ford accused Donald Trump’s Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (who had been a Supreme Court Judge for 12 years by that point) of sexually harassing her at a party in 1982. There was a lengthy hearing and an FBI Investigation both of which showed that there was no substantial evidence to prove Dr Ford’s allegations. Dr Ford, who had raised $647,000 on her GoFundMe, used the money to cover her legal expenses and the case was closed, resulting in Judge Kavanaugh being appointed Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.
Source: Getty Images
The media, especially in the US, ranging from Vox to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, painted Brett Kavanaugh in a terrible light, for a crime he was accused of committing when he was in high school, with testimony from parties who were intoxicated during these events, made to recall details from over 30-years in the past. On the other hand, Reade’s claims are from a sober individual, who is known to have worked for Joe Biden and has shown that she promptly quit after this incident and yet major news publications are giving Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt.
In fact, when Joe Biden himself was asked about the indubitable parallels, he said “Women are to be given the benefit of the doubt…Start off with the presumption of truth, but look at the facts of the case” (Evans, 2020).
I would like to focus on one statement, “LOOK AT THE FACTS OF THE CASE.”. In both cases, the only facts we have are the statements of these women. How come in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, we suddenly question his character (a man with a wife and children who has upheld family values for his entire career) and accuse him of white privilege, as if Joe Biden is not a straight, white male? In Reade’s case, they questioned her beliefs, accusing her of being linked with Putin and being an agent to take down the democratic party. She has received a lot of hate and even numerous death threats. Huge names in media such as Bill Maher, have openly questioned Tara Reade’s integrity but did not hold Dr Ford to the same scrutiny back in 2018.
Vox made a video called “You’re watching Fox News. You just don’t know it.” The description of this video reads, “Fox News was created to push right-wing nonsense to the mainstream, and now there’s no escape.” And that is the theme of the whole video, but their main claim is that there’s no left-wing equivalent to Fox News. This is because most of the media worldwide, including Vox, are openly left-leaning.
The problem with this becomes apparent when you assess the Kavanaugh-Biden double standard as a case study. Both the circumstances are the same and yet the widespread media coverage is so different. How can you give a woman the benefit of the doubt in one situation but take it away from her in another? Shouldn’t we believe these women? Just because the allegations are against a Democrat, does that make it less valid? Does that make her experience less horrific? Such experiences are generally extremely traumatic and take a lot of courage to speak up about, and when a woman chooses to do that, how can we as a society accept these ‘reputed’ journalism houses questioning her character and her motivations?
These questions all point to a frightening conclusion. We have come to accept bias in journalism. We’ve become either too-trusting or too cynical when it comes to media because you don’t know how they’re spinning the story. Ever since the news became a commercial enterprise, it is designed to catch your attention. From newsboys shouting “Extra, Extra” on the streets in the 19th century to the ‘click-bait’ articles of today, everyone is competing for your attention. Due to this, you tend to give your attention to the sources that most agree with your world-view. However, this is dangerous because, in the end, it’s one individual’s opinion passing on to another.
Most of the youth today consume highly-opinionated news on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. This tends to mould their minds into one train of thought that this ‘influencer’ or ‘reputable news source’ has conveyed. Most of the time, the ‘news’ that’s being reported is either highly exaggerated or entirely untrue.
If you take the media today and tear down the glitz and the glamour, you'll see how little is based on fact. My favourite way to consume the news is to read the perspective opposite to mine, so I can form an opinion that's educated and takes all sides into consideration. The reason I do this is because it's important for us to form opinions based on facts rather than someone else's opinion. How will we go forward if the minds of the masses are controlled by the opinionated few?
Works Cited
Evans, Z. (2020, May 1). Biden Breaks Silence on Sexual Assault Allegation, Vows to Search Senate Files for Reade’s Complaint. Retrieved from National Review : https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-breaks-silence-on-sexual-assault-allegation-vows-to-search-senate-files-for-reades-complaint/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first
HIRSCHAUER, J. (2020, May 4). The Biden–Kavanaugh Double Standard. Retrieved from National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/joe-biden-brett-kavanaugh-media-the-left-apply-double-standard/
Lerer, L., & Ember, S. (2020, April 12). Examining Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Allegation Against Joe Biden. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-sexual-assault-complaint.html
North, A. (2020, April 29). A sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden has ignited a firestorm of controversy. Retrieved from Vox: https://www.vox.com/2020/3/27/21195935/joe-biden-sexual-assault-allegation
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