MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” revisited how the program criticized the media over its coverage of sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh back in 2018.
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist spoke Friday about Kavanaugh ahead of their much-anticipated interview with former Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden has been accused of sexual assault by former staffer Tara Reade. He denied the allegations directly Friday in both a written statement and on “Morning Joe.” (RELATED: It Took 37 Days For Media To Ask Joe Biden About Tara Reade’s Sexual Assault Accusation)
The MSNBC show’s co-host Mika Brzezinski began the long segment about Biden by first decrying how the media handled Kavanaugh.
“The media should not apply what seemed to be a Kavanaugh standard to Joe Biden,” Brzezinski said. “The media should not apply the same standard most applied to Judge Kavanaugh to Donald Trump. The media should not apply a Kavanaugh standard to any public figure.”
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“The blanket and absolute standard of simply believing all women is a notion we dismissed here on the show early on,” Brzezinski added before showing a compilation of ‘Morning Joe’ clips that featured them criticizing the media’s handling of the allegation.
MSNBC’s compilation included Brzezinski saying back in 2018 that anyone who smears either party involved in the Kavanaugh allegations would “be kicked off the set.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough added that they want to “call networks and put a ‘D’ in front of the name of the so-called journalists that have already decided that Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist.'”
“What was the — ‘serial sexual abuser,'” Scarborough said in 2018. “Oh really? You know that? Do you really know that?”
In yet another segment, the co-hosts are seen lamenting about “the untold story” of “how biased” the press was in its reporting on Kavanaugh. Scarborough pointed out that “respected columnists” were referring to Kavanaugh as “a serial sexual predator” with no pushback.
“There didn’t seem to be the pushback that there should have been from network executives, from opinion page editors,” Scarborough noted in October 2018.
“During Kavanaugh, and sometimes when you have scandal after scandal after scandal pile on top of each other, the journalistic standard is just brushed aside and ignored. It’s just run over,” Scarborough said in February 2019.
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Scarborough continued during that clip to say that he hopes “somebody at a journalism school looks back” at what happened and notes the “low standards that a lot of journalists” and editors “held themselves too.”
“There’s reason why the FBI needed more time to investigate. Because quite frankly, a lot of journalists put a lot of garbage out there,” Scarborough is seen saying in 2019.
Brzezinski closed her introduction to the flashback of clips by reminding Americans about how the media should cover and handle all sexual assault accusations.
“The standard for the media in covering sexual assault allegations needs to be to report the facts. Listen to the accuser. And give the accused full due process, both men and women. We were very clear about that on the show during the Kavanaugh story.”
