Topic: Media Research Center
In their newest column, Tim Graham and Brent Bozell lament that "the left" likes to believe that "the victim" in a rape accusation is the female accuser, going on to lament the treatment of their favorite alleged rape victim:
This is not the way these "watchdogs" handled Juanita Broaddrick's charge of rape against President Clinton in 1999. Even after NBC's Lisa Myers nailed down particulars establishing that Clinton and Broaddrick were in the same hotel on the same day in 1978, with witnesses who vouchsafed her tortured condition, the networks all but ignored the accuser and her story.
Bozell and Graham don't mention that there was a good reason for the media to discount Broaddrick's story: She changed it.
Prior to flipping in 1998, Broaddrick had repeatedly insisted that Clinton didn't rape her; she even said so under oath. It was not until she gave into the Clinton-haters -- and, more crucially, received a promise of immunity from independent counsel Kenneth Starr that she wouldn't be prosecuted for perjury -- that she changed her story.
Bozell and Graham don't mention that Broaddrick is a documented liar -- she either lied then or she's lying now.We don't recall the two ever telling that to their readers; indeed, a quick search of the MRC website mentions nothing about Broaddrick's contradictory claims or the immunity deal she received from Starr.
As we've also noted, there's enough evidence of the Broaddrick accusations being motivated by partisan politics and personal spite to cast further doubt on them. Indeed, according to Joe Conason's "The Hunting of the President," that's exactly what happened.
But Broaddrick made a sensational accusation against the hated Clinton, and that was good enough for the MRC.
Perhaps Bozell and Graham should have found a better example to use when it comes to the debating the veracity of rape allegations.
