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NYT Faces Backlash After Deleting Tweet On Biden Sexual Assault Allegation, Gives Vague Explanation

   DailyWire.com
People walk along 8th Avenue in front of the New York Times headquarters on March 9, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

The New York Times is facing backlash after stealth-editing a report on a sexual assault claim against Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and deleting a tweet that — unfortunately for the editors trying to sneak the notable edit by readers — featured the passage that was edited.

In the original report, published early Sunday, the Times finally reported on the credible accusation against Biden by one of his former Senate staffers, Tara Reade, who says that in 1993 Biden “pinned her to a wall in a Senate building, reached under her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers.” The Times reports:

A friend said that Ms. Reade told her the details of the allegation at the time. Another friend and a brother of Ms. Reade’s said she told them over the years about a traumatic sexual incident involving Mr. Biden.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Biden said the allegation was false. In interviews, several people who worked in the Senate office with Ms. Reade said they did not recall any talk of such an incident or similar behavior by Mr. Biden toward her or any women. Two office interns who worked directly with Ms. Reade said they were unaware of the allegation or any treatment that troubled her.

Last year, Ms. Reade and seven other women came forward to accuse Mr. Biden of kissing, hugging or touching them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Ms. Reade told The Times then that Mr. Biden had publicly stroked her neck, wrapped his fingers in her hair and touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable.

After speaking to Reade and “nearly two dozen people who worked with Mr. Biden during the early 1990s, including many who worked with Ms. Reade; and the other seven women who criticized Mr. Biden last year, to discuss their experiences with him,” the Times concludes that they found “no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.” Here’s how the original key passage read:

No other allegation of sexual assault surfaced in the course of our reporting, nor did any former Biden staffer corroborate Reade’s allegation. We found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden, beyond hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.

That passage was tweeted out by the Times (see below). But within minutes of publishing the report, the Times revised the passage, providing no notice and no explanation for the change in the article. Here’s how the revised passage now reads:

No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.

The portion that suddenly vanished without explanation — “beyond hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable” — sparked widespread criticism online, particularly after the Times revised the passage in the report but left the tweet up. The tweet was eventually deleted Sunday.

The only acknowledgement from the Times that they revised the passage came in a vague tweet noting that one of the tweets on the report (the one highlighting the passage) had been deleted because it “had some imprecise language that has been changed in the story.”

Many media figures and Twitter users, and outlets, including Fox News, Hot Air, and Twitchy, have called out the Times for the stealth edit and tweet debacle.

Fox News highlights a few responses, including from Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept: “The [New York Times] deleted this tweet and also did an unacknowledged edit of this out of their story. Brave,” tweeted Scahill. “What would the correction even say? ‘An earlier version of this story contained a true statement that the Biden campaign demanded we remove so we cut it without alerting our readers.’ Something like that?”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald also weighed in: “Do you think people won’t notice that liberal institutions and media outlets spent months maligning Brett Kavanaugh’s defenders as misogynistic rape apologists, only to now invoke all their arguments to defend Joe Biden [and] demean Tara Reade? Do you think people are that dumb?”

Bernie Sanders’ national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray also criticized the Times’ handling of the allegation: “I’m not sure how that line from the NYT’s long-delayed coverage of Tara Reade’s accusation can sit alongside reporting that 7 other women have accused Biden of sexual misconduct.”

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