The Ashley Judd “Rape Comment” Story That Just Won’t Go Away

The problem is, it never happened. I was at that dinner and never heard her say anything remotely like that. What’s more, such a statement would have been completely inconsistent with the way I’ve heard Ashley discuss her horrifying experiences as the youthful victim of sexual assault—how they defined her in adulthood; how they propelled her to champion women’s empowerment across the globe.

I specifically did not call out Howard Fineman, because I didn’t blame him.  I was 100% confident that someone told him this story, and it was that anonymous source who was either mistaken or lying, not Fineman.  (Hence the headline of my piece.)  I respect Fineman a great deal, and am always proud to see folks do so well who have strong Kentucky ties (Fineman went to law school and was a newspaper reporter in Louisville), especially if they are Jewish (there’s far too few of us in my old Kentucky home.)

Of course, J.K. Trotter didn’t see it that way.  From The Atlantic Wire:

That’s a pretty harsh charge leveled by a pretty biased source from inside a now pretty old-news story against Fineman, a decorated journalist (inside and out of Kentucky) who currently serves as Editorial Director at The Huffington Post, which closely tracked the preliminary movements of the Kentucky race.

Trotter then continued by reporting on an interview with Fineman:

“I doubled checked with my source, and I stand by the quote and the story,” Fineman told The Atlantic Wire over email. Fineman clarified that Judd didn’t announce this comment to the rest of the dinner’s guests, only his source.

“I don’t know who else heard it,” Fineman continued. “This [source] was a Judd supporter, by the way. The person told Judd what a tough and nasty campaigner McConnell was, and that is how Judd answered.” That could explain why Miller “never heard [Judd] say anything remotely like that,” in that Judd wasn’t speaking to everyone present when she said it.

Fineman admitted that his report was ambiguous about Judd’s delivery of the quote. “It was not in an event-wide moment, I don’t think, but I didn’t say it was,” he said. “The wording in the piece is ambiguous, though, and for that I apologize.”

Kudos to Fineman for apologizing.  Too few people on any side of the political arena take responsibility when they’ve made a mistake, even a small one.

But his admission reveals a deep, underlying problem of today’s politics.

As the national media slurped up any tiny drop of news or gossip to slake its unquenchable thirst for Ashley Judd stories, it seized on a “quote,” attested to by only one anonymous source, made not in a televised debate (a la Akin), or at a public event (such as George Allen’s Macaca moment), or even before a group of people at a private forum (see Mitt Romney’s 47% line), but rather in an intimate one-on-one conversation.

For the reasons I outlined above, I still don’t think Judd made that comment — my assumption is that the anonymous source (who is probably a friend of mine, since it was a small dinner) mis-remembered it.

But even if she did, do we now hold public figures to such scrutiny that an off-color line whispered between two intimates can be seized as fodder for a national scandal? If we held all of our leaders to that exacting standard, where there is no zone of privacy, will there be anyone left to lead us?

Further, in this age of cell-phone cameras and tiny digital recorders, if there is no tangible proof, shouldn’t there be some journalistic standard that you need more than just the testimony of one anonymous source to publish something of substance, particularly something this controversial?

Ultimately, this affair is not about Judd’s candidacy; as I argued in The Daily Beast, I don’t believe any of these antics ultimately drove her from the race.

However, it does say a great deal about an endemic problem with our political system, and particularly news coverage of its players.  It’s high time that the journalism community reflects on the rapidly changing dynamics of the new media, and develops a set of self-governing, ethical standards to ensure fairness, accuracy and context.