“The media coverage of this has been so one-sided, it’s been so biased. There’s been this presumption from the beginning that every allegation made against the judge was true.” So said Joe Scarborough on a fall morning in 2018, referring to the flood of bizarre sexual abuse claims made against Brett Kavanaugh.
At the time, Scarborough relayed an observation from social events he attended over the weekend. “Quite a few people that we talked to, who I think a lot of them were registered Democrats, raised questions about Dr. [Christine Blasey] Ford’s story,” he said. Scarborough opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court but at least conceded the obvious: The media favored Blasey Ford, despite some reasonable concerns about her credibility.
Coverage of Blasey Ford’s allegations was so clearly slanted that even Jeff Greenfield criticized CNN on “Reliable Sources.”
“There is an overwhelming perception as a viewer … that CNN in effect or most of its people have taken a stand about this president and about this nomination,” he told Brian Stelter.
Later on the same edition of Stelter’s show, Trump opponent David Gergen expressed concerns about the coverage too. “We have to be very, very careful in how we report and not to go overboard, not to get hysterical and to show both sides,” he warned. (The Onion mocked the media’s smear campaign with the headline: “Kavanaugh Nomination Falters After Washington Post Publishes Shocking Editorial Claiming He Forgot Daughter’s Piano Recital.”)
Fast forward six years, and
