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.
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?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member