When you announce right at the top that you haven’t read the thing that angers you so, why is anyone supposed to take you seriously?

One thing that bothers me about this whole story.

That was multiple accusers, for the record. “Al Franken secretly wanted to kiss me but didn’t.” One was in private at the radio station, another was the lady from this story that claimed the secret kiss was on stage, in front of their spouses and an audience and on live TV. Another accuser said he made her felt fat…

I don’t know the details of Jezebel’s coverage, except what I’ve read here, but I’ve followed this story from a moderate interest perspective. I heard Jane Mayer on Fresh Air. I think she brought up some salient points and she also tried to make some difficult points salient. Basically I’m left at: Al Franken did some…

A non stupid reporter or fact checker would never send another reporter confidential information without a verbal or written agreement that the info is off the record. Oh, oh, oh especially when the reporter had previously declared that she is investigating shoddy journalism by the employer of said reporter or fact…

Even if you’re right about every detail here, I don’t see that it moves the needle. Mayer’s article shows that Tweeden’s accusation was highly misleading and a baldfaced political hit job orchestrated by GOP gorilla Roger Stone. And that Schumer denied Franken the hearing — the due process — he asked for.

Mayer says the Globe “deemed the story too weak.” Lazar herself in the email published here says the accuser’s story “seemed too weak to run with,” citing a.) the woman’s reluctance, and b.) lack of any corroborating evidence.

If this accuser had gone to the Globe with the evidence that she went to Jezebel went, her story would have facially met their standards for publication. They didn’t pass because she was anonymous, they passed because they hadn’t gotten corroborating evidence because their pursuit of the story just never got to that…

This piece is written as if the writer blew the lid off Mayer’s story, but it comes down to a series of picayune rhetorical arguments over things like whether news outlets “passed” on the story. The Globe did pass on the story. It was brought to them, they did what they could to report it out, and, when they lost the…

What? You can send something to a journalist with a sticky that says “off the record” and that automatically makes it off the record? The Salinger comparison is stupid beyond belief. To make it comparable, Salinger would have had to mail the biographer the letters with a note not to publish them. But the sloppy…

When the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, the one punished IS a victim

Sorry, I just don’t agree. I read the article by Jane Mayer, and it seemed to echo my reactions during the affair as it originally unfolded. To me is all stank of a setup by right-wingers to take down a rising star among the Democrats: Franken was probably the most effective voice in the Senate against the Trump/GOP…

What utter hogwash! You should read the piece in the New Yorker!

I read the article by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker and your piece here, and I don’t think you have more than an extremely weak and spindly leg to stand on. I read carefully and tried to go with your line of reasoning and interpretation of the facts, but I don’t think you get anywhere near to proving that Mayer’s piece…

You may have a point, but it feels like a pretty nuanced one. Which is the entire point of scrutinizing the #metoo movement. There is nuance that people want to ignore.

In her email, Lazar of the Globe tells Mayer not that the story was “too weak” factually, but that it was “too weak” because they could not do it without the woman’s participation.

Exactly. The New Yorker article assumed, correctly, that in the Globe’s eyes, “too weak” in corroboration (i.e., no participation from the woman the kiss happened to) means “too weak” as a publishable fact. There is no real distinction.

You’re making a distinction without finding an actual difference.

Seems to me like Jane Meyer is not being very nice to another reporter questioning her work *shocker* but the criticisms presented here are about a couple of grafs in Mayer’s long article. I give Mayer the benefit of the doubt because the quote from the witness actually bolsters the Vermont official’s account. Mayer…

Your characterization of the New Yorker’s usage of the phrase “too weak” is dubious at best. Nowhere in their usage of that phrase do they indicate that the basis of that judgement by the Globe is a factual one. In fact the preceding sentence includes the Globe’s requirement that the accuser be identified, which if…