New York Times reporter Robin Pogrebin is blaming the glaring journalistic failures of her new anti-Brett Kavanaugh book on everyone but herself. After days of backlash against her multiple, major errors and lack of substantiating evidence for serious accusations, Pogrebin tweeted a Vox article that claims Fox News, not her own errors, is somehow responsible for creating the controversy.
After Pogrebin shared the article title, “How Fox News twisted the Kavanaugh scandal into a way to attack the New York Times,” on Wednesday morning, her tweet was immediately “ratioed”–a term for when a tweet has significantly more replies than retweets or likes, indicating popular dislike or outrage.
It would appear that people have some feedback for @rpogrebin trying to “but Fox News!” her way our of a major NYT scandal. pic.twitter.com/C4mese7FjI
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) September 18, 2019
The author of the Vox article writes that the fact Pogrebin and her co-author Kate Kelly left out the not-so-minor detail that an alleged witness does not remember an alleged incident makes the accusation against Kavanaugh “arguably weaker” than if she did recall the incident. He then goes on to accuse Fox News of not “engaging with the substance of any of the allegations,” when in reality the substance of the allegations is that Pogrebin’s and Kelly’s reporting cannot confirm the allegations even happened.
The Vox writer also conveniently leaves out the critiques that were not just coming from conservative media or Fox News, but from across the mainstream media, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and feminist Rebecca Traister.
It’s flabbergasting. And while I’m sure someone at the Times still thinks that by some both-sides bullshit-objectivity meter it’s a victory to make both conservatives and feminists livid, it’s actually coming across as truly bizarre ineptitude. https://t.co/4rTyPpQFg8
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) September 16, 2019
How did the @nytimes editors fail to include the below info in their article re: Kavanuagh? Would they have done so had @MZHemingway not noted the glaring omission yesterday? It was a stunning decision to leave that central fact out of an article filled with damning accusations. pic.twitter.com/ldlTYmqcTt
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) September 16, 2019
Fox News is not the first scapegoat Pogrebin and Kelly have tried to pin their mistakes on. On Tuesday, the reporters appeared on “The View,” where they were pressed to answer how these errors occurred and if they could explain the fierce backlash coming from all sides. They claimed that their book was being “seized” for political purposes.
“It was used for political purposes at the time [last fall]. It’s being used again, for political purposes now,” Pogrebin said. “People have seized on details in our book.”
In response to the question of whether these allegations are an impeachable offense, Pogrebin complained a second time that, “people have seized on certain things and magnified them for their own purposes,” and said, “It’s fine to have a series of Democratic candidates calling for impeachment, but that was before the book came out.”
NYT Reporter Robin Pogrebin complains that "people have seized on certain things" but that "it's fine to have Democratic candidates calling for impeachment" pic.twitter.com/o5BFoLedPN
— Madeline Osburn (@madelineorr) September 17, 2019
Kelly then implied that they, not Kavanaugh, are the victims of the outrage mob. “It’s a rush to judgement and I feel like we are living out right here, right now at this table, a version of the kind of vortex and the problems that we are writing about,” she said.
Pogrebin also received pushback from feminists and others for composing a tweet for the Times that described sexual assault as “harmless fun.” On Tuesday, CNN Anchor Alisyn Camerota asked if she wrote the tweet but she would not take responsibility, only saying “it just feels like a distraction to try and go back over all of that.” A few hours later on “The View,” she admitted that she drafted the tweet.
Users on Twitter continues the NYT dog pile on Wednesday.
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) September 18, 2019
So Fox News was the one who neglected to include in your article that the woman in question said she didn’t recall any such incident or sexual misconduct?
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) September 18, 2019
I’m so sorry this is happening to you.
— Retired Orrin G. Hatch (@RetiredOrrin) September 18, 2019
“As soon as we realized this, we corrected it.” — Robin Pogrebin, now attempting to spread messaging that it’s false to say it’s a correction.
Of note, you voluntarily went out of your way to make the same error on an NPR interview that aired Monday. https://t.co/SibpW4Yk1p— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 18, 2019
“We so wish nobody had noticed our egregious errors as we attempted to smear our political opponents without any supporting evidence.”
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 18, 2019
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 18, 2019
