On Friday, Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden were bolstered when a 1993 clip from CNN’s “Larry King Live” surfaced, seemingly confirming Reade’s claim that at the time she says she was assaulted by Biden, she told her mother, her brother, and a close friend, and filed a report. She had also contended that her mother anonymously called in on Larry King’s show on CNN to ask for advice on how to handle the situation.
There aren’t many details in the clip, but it certainly gives credence to the allegations. Nevertheless, CNN is now in the hot seat for failing to uncover the footage themselves after their reluctance to cover Tara Reade’s claim. It was the Media Research Center’s Newsbusters that ultimately uncovered the video from their own vault.
BREAKING: Is this the mother of Joe Biden's accuser talking to CNN in 1993? pic.twitter.com/rF7jw35s2F
— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) April 24, 2020
“It’s truly despicable that this footage existed and yet CNN failed to do its own due diligence within its own archives,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News.
Tara Reade confirmed the voice on the show to be that of her mother. “I just heard audio, my mother died and hearing her voice made me cry. She was such a good mom and always watching out for me even now,” she said. Reade added that video proves her claim, “that I was forced out and wanted to come forward in 1993.”
Tara Reade’s allegations have been buried by the media. ABC, NBC and CNN have not reported on it at all, and it’s received minimal coverage from CBS, PBS, and MSNBC, according to Newsbusters analysis. CNN mentioned the allegations in one story on April 17, “when correspondent MJ Lee framed the story as Democratic leaders and allies of Biden being ‘asked to respond to an allegation’ against the 2020 Democratic frontrunner.”
“Perhaps they thought doing the bare minimum with help from the horribly biased MJ Lee would have done the trick and made the concerns about their on-air silence go away,” Houck mused. “Now they’ve poured gasoline on the fire. Once again, we see a case of how the worst kind of media bias is the bias that you don’t see, or bias by omission.”
“While unsurprising given how fundamentally unserious of a network CNN has become, it’s gratifying for the MRC but shameful for CNN that they hadn’t unearthed this long ago,” Houck added.
Biden has made multiple appearances on CNN since Read came forward earlier this year. The presumptive Democratic nominee has never been asked about her allegations.
“Biden is presumed to be the Democrat nominee for president and that makes this matter newsworthy enough to be investigated, with of course all precautions for fairness and accuracy,” DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall told Fox News. “The discovery of this video clip does provide some extra evidence in the matter and it should be reported with proper context and scrutiny. But it shouldn’t be summarily dismissed as irrelevant, particularly in this era.”
_____
Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
Join the conversation as a VIP Member