When I heard Steve Inskeep interview Politico's Jonathan Martin on NPR's Morning Edition this morning I couldn't help but think that journalists would be in a hell of a fix if they had to provide due process to the subjects of their investigative inquiries. Steve Inskeep asks Martin, "What exactly did Herman Cain allegedly do?" Martin says he can't reveal "too much that would imperil these women, but it was behavior that made them feel uncomfortable; it was sexually suggestive behavior." You can hear the interview here; the exchange starts at the 1:37 mark. The Politico story is here. The Politico story provides a bit more detail -- "conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature" as well as "physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship." Notice of the charges? You did and said things that were perceived as sexually suggestive and made people uncomfortable. Opportunity to respond? Cain was asked whether he had ever been accused of sexual harassment, which is a bit like asking when he stopped beating his wife. A bit; not the same thing, of course. Maybe Herman Cain is a sexual harasser; maybe he's not, but in a courtroom he would be entitled to more specificity. Not in journalism.
Update: Here is Eugene Volokh's commentary on the New York Times take on this -- an original headline that Cain "concedes and dismisses" the charges, which Eugene thinks is a curious coupling of terms, and I suspect was a deliberate choice to make Cain look bad. At any rate the New York Times has changed its headline -- it's now "Cain Calls Harassment Issue a Witch Hunt." Appropriate for Halloween.
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