An 11th-hour attempt to slander Brett Kavanaugh

As awful as the allegation about Kavanaugh is (and one is justified in questioning its veracity under the circumstances), the use of an anonymous document to undermine him at a time when he’s poised to become a Supreme Court justice is dreadful. Equally terrible was the recent unnamed op-ed from a White House insider underscoring President Trump’s incompetence. No regular reader of this column would mistake me for a Trump supporter, but fairness and journalistic integrity took a hit with the New York Times’s publication of the op-ed. In the newspaper world I inhabit, Anonymous doesn’t get a byline.

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Nor should Kavanaugh’s accuser get a public hearing, especially under such clearly political circumstances. In today’s #MeToo environment, a mere suggestion can be treated as an indictment — and little imagination is required to make the leap to guilty. A letter of this sort by itself is of no value to the public other than to confirm that the Senate now traffics in gossip. And at a time when journalists are concerned with “alternative facts” and Trump’s war on truth, how much faith can we put in the facts and truth of an anonymous letter or op-ed?

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