JOURNALISM IN ACTION – AT 11:51 A.M. ET: NBC News goes after the big story! See the result! Hear the action! From Daily Caller:
NBC News journalists — including veteran reporter Andrea Mitchell — conducted interviews last week with Juanita Broaddrick, the Arkansas woman who says Bill Clinton raped her in 1978, but decided not to go forward with a story, claiming that there was not “anything new” to report.
“When Juanita Broaddrick went public last week, NBC News sent an associate producer to Arkansas to see if there was anything new in her story. We established there was not, and decided not to pursue it any further,” an NBC spokesperson told Buzzfeed News.
Broaddrick, a 73-year-old retired nursing home administrator, spoke out on Twitter last Wednesday after 17 years of silence about the alleged rape.
“I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73…. it never goes away,” Broaddrick wrote in a tweet that has been shared 13,000 times.
Broaddrick, who is one of numerous women who have accused Clinton of sexual violence or harassment over the years, had first talked publicly about the 1978 incident in a 1999 interview with NBC’s “Dateline.” She said during that interview that she met Clinton when she went to volunteer at the Little Rock headquarters of his gubernatorial campaign. She said she and Clinton later met for coffee at a hotel where she was staying but that the politician asked to carry on their discussion in her room. There, Broaddrick says Clinton raped her.
COMMENT: So NBC News decides there's not "anything new." That's like saying that we're dropping a murder story because the victim is still dead. The issue here is not whether Ms. Broaddrick has some new twist. The issue here is that Hillary Clinton, a self-described fighter for women's rights, apparently tried to silence and destroy women who made credible charges of sexual impropriety against her husband. That issue doesn't require "newness," only investigation. Hillary Clinton is now a presidential candidate and should be held to account by the news media. Don't hold your breath.
January 15, 2016 |