The Media Finds Conservative Leaders Guilty Until Proven Innocent
First, it was Republican Congressman Jim Jordan. Now it’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
These men are considered guilty by association for being in proximity of wrongdoing that took place almost 30 years ago.
Allegedly, Jordan took no action as a young assistant wrestling coach regarding sexual misconduct of the team’s doctor. And Kavanaugh was a law clerk for a judge later accused of sexual harassment.
There will be questions to Kavanaugh during his confirmations hearings, which will relegate these absurd insinuations to the trash where they belong. But Jordan is an influential conservative congressman, and he is being hurt.
Why is it so easy for the media to inflict damage at what appears to be so little cost to them?
I’m reminded of the Duke University lacrosse team rape-case fiasco in 2006, where a corrupt prosecutor with an agenda and an all too willing left-wing press and university administration were ready to convict young men — with no facts.
It was just too beautiful a story for the left: Young white athletes raping a black woman that they hired to strip at their team party house.
Except it didn’t happen. But the team coach was fired; the university suspended the team and canceled the playing season. The players were tried and convicted in the press, and 88 members of the Duke University faculty signed a letter carried in the university newspaper essentially confirming the guilt of the players and the alleged crime.
How can we not be thinking about this case with these horrible and unsubstantiated allegations surrounding Jordan, who to all who know him is a man of impeccable character and standards?
Where’s the reporting on those who knew Jordan from this time and who substantiate his claim that he didn’t know what was going on?
James Freeman of The Wall Street Journal provides the sought-after responsible journalism on this issue. He reports that midway in Jordan’s coaching career, he recruited his cousin, a high school wrestling star, to Ohio State University. Freeman quotes Jordan’s cousin that the possibility that Jordan would recruit him to a place where he would “be threatened by a sexual predator is so outside the realm of possibility that it’s laughable.”
Further, as Freeman reports, astonishingly the law firm Ohio State has hired to investigate this, Perkins Coie, is the same firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to develop the dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump.
Is it an accident that Jordan, who is going after the FBI like an attack dog and is now contending for House speaker, is somehow now being exposed to this character assassination?
Sally Quinn, a former columnist and widow of The Washington Post’s Watergate-era editor Ben Bradlee, recently wrote in Politico about her late husband’s commitment to truth in journalism. But today the Post is part of the journalism-by-innuendo cesspool.
A recent Post column by a staffer of former Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid advises probing what law clerk Brett Kavanaugh might have known about sexual harassment by his then-boss Judge Alex Kozinski 27 years ago, as a strategy to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
We know the left bias of the press. According to the Center for Public Integrity, 96 percent of political contributions in 2016 identified from journalists went to Clinton. According to a 2013 survey, journalists identifying as Democratic outnumber those identifying as Republican 4 to 1. In a survey published in 2016 of 40 top universities, Democrats in journalism departments outnumber Republicans 20 to 1.
But our problem with the press is less about politics than integrity. The ease with which flimsy insinuation is published as information, insinuation that can cause serious damage to a person of quality, is something that should deeply concern every American. We should not tolerate it.
Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.
A version of this Op-Ed previously appeared on The Daily Signal website under the headline, “The Media Finds Conservative Leaders Guilty Until Proven Innocent.”
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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