OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA: Ben Smith’s NYT Critique of Ronan Farrow Describes a Toxic, Corrosive, and Still-Vibrant Trump-Era Pathology: “Resistance Journalism.”

Related: Byron York on “The era of resistance journalism:”

Here’s the odd thing. Smith goes through a number of Farrow stories, as well as Farrow’s book, but never mentions his role in one of the most appalling stories published during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle. In September 2018, Farrow and the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer published the tale of Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that 35 years earlier, when both she and Kavanaugh were 18 year-old freshmen at Yale, there was a small dorm-room party at which Ramirez — drunk, ‘on the floor, foggy and slurring her words’ — remembered Kavanaugh exposing himself to her. Ramirez admitted she only recalled the incident after consulting with her attorney. Farrow and Mayer could not find any eyewitnesses. Nor were there any real witnesses at all. Later reporters tried to substantiate the story and found a bunch of “witnesses” who had heard something from somebody who might have known something about something they heard might have happened. The story was embarrassingly weak.

It was “resistance journalism” at its worst. And it should not be forgotten.

But pointing that out might upset the Gray Lady’s more delicate readers. Sweeping it under the rug is best for all concerned.