Posted on 11/01/2019 10:16:19 AM PDT by Mount Athos
A reporter who now works for the New York Times failed to report on public records, which he obtained in April, that cut against Senator Elizabeth Warrens (D., Mass.) claim that she was fired from a teaching position in 1971 due to pregnancy discrimination.
Reid Epstein, who was then working for the Wall Street Journal, filed an open-records request with the Riverdale Board of Education on April 2 seeking to inspect or obtain copies of public records relating to Warrens time teaching at Riverdale during the 1970-1971 school year. In response to his request, Epstein on April 10 received school-board minutes that challenge Warrens story, according to documents obtained by National Review through the New Jersey Open Records Act.
Epstein, who moved to the Times on April 19, never broke the story. Reached for comment, a Times spokeswoman said that the records were inconclusive and the potential story required further sourcing.
Earlier this month, the Washington Free Beacon obtained the aforementioned school-board minutes showing that the Riverdale Board of Education had approved a second-year teaching contract for a young Elizabeth Warren in April 1971. Rather than accepting the boards offer of continued employment, Warren chose to tender her resignation, which was accepted with regret, according to minutes from a school-board meeting held two months after the offer was extended.
One day after the Free Beacon reported on the apparent discrepancy, the Times published an article that listed Epstein as a contributor. The Times reporting frames the story around the discrimination that many pregnant women have faced on the job and highlights Warrens statement, which dismissed the evidence gathered by the Beacon as lacking in context.
I was pregnant, but nobody knew it. And then a couple of months later when I was six months pregnant and it was pretty obvious, the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job, Warren told CBS News on October 7.
Epstein continued to publish articles at the Journal until May 4, none of which included reporting on the school-board minutes. His final byline was published more than three weeks after he received the relevant documents. He declined to comment when asked why he failed to report the story.
New York Times vice president of communications Danielle Rhoades Ha explained that the paper did not feel comfortable publishing the contents of the school-board minutes given that the documents may not fully explain the circumstances of Warrens departure.
As has been reported, the meeting minutes of the Board of Education showed that Warrens contract was extended for another school year. We sought interviews with contemporaneous sources about that contract and her statements that she was ultimately let go once she was visibly pregnant. Many of those sources, including fellow teachers, the school principal and board members, were dead, her statement read. Others said they did not remember. The records were inconclusive about the circumstances under which she left, and we continued reporting. The Times and others have since reported about Warrens statements about her departure as well as the board minutes.
Warren has repeatedly described on the campaign trail how she was shown the door after one year because her pregnancy became visible and routinely claims that the experience informed her commitment to gender equality and her decision to enter politics.
Questions around Warrens account first emerged in early October, when a Jacobin magazine journalist resurfaced a 2007 interview at the University of California, Berkeley, in which Warren claimed she left teaching of her own volition in order to care for her child.
I worked in a public school system with the children with disabilities. I did that for a year . . . I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, I dont think this is going to work out for me, Warren said at the time. I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years.
Warrens 2013 memoir, A Fighting Chance, also mentions the incident but casts her departure from the school as the result of sexist discrimination rather than as the personal decision suggested by the school-board minutes.
By the end of the school year, I was pretty obviously pregnant, Warren writes. The principal did what I think a lot of principals did back thenwished me good luck, didnt ask me back the next school year, and hired someone else for the job.
The Wall Street Journal communications departments failed to respond to a request for comment by press time.
Slowly but surely, the mainstream media are taking out all DEM candidates not named Hillary.
Well it’s still better than being sat on by Warren.
They’re taking themselves out one by one, don’t need the media to do it.
Good. She’s proven herself to be beyond psychotic at this point and Trump will get her goat in no time.
They did that with the Monica Lewinsky story too.
But they immediately run with anything that might hurt Trump.
They are such scum.
Bingo!
Hillary is clearing the field. Shell then come to the rescue of the party at the convention. She still controls the DNC and the super delegates.
HILLARY WILL NEVER BE THE CANDIDATE FOR ANY RACE EVER AGAIN.
Even the liberals laugh when they are asked if she will run.
She spent 1.4 billion dollars and still lost a rigged election to a political nobody.
I wish she was the candidate because then President Trump would easily win all 57 states.
But the tabloid will accept statements about Trump from unnamed sources as gospel and go to press.
Try not to fall in love too hard, ladies.
Hillary believes she won the election but it was stolen in 2016 by Russia.
Shes clearing the field of Dems. She controls the party.
Shes softening up Trump with the impeachment. Theyll run a Romney type against Trump to primary him.
Then here comes Hillary.
They have to run to keep the money flowing.
Delusional? She won the popular vote and truly believes shes destined to win. Shes running again if shes alive.
“Heh heh heh heh, hey Beavis”
Who was it that said politicians were all born in log cabins...after Lincoln...
DK
“”””Shes clearing the field of Dems. She controls the party.”
No, she doesn’t. They want her to go away.
Nobody listens to her anymore.
They gave her 1.4 billion dollars and she still lost a rigged election.
She’s done, Jim.
I actually bet on the beest running again, as I grew up in NJ and understand megalomaniacs...but you’re right. I’ve come to my senses. Even with all the dirt she has on a lot of deep staters, it’s not enough leverage to overtake the kommunist partei apparatchik power brokers. I believe her and Bill have passed their totalitarian shelf life.
If it is negative issues on a Democrat they double check, then triple check, then give the Democrat ample time to respond, then check some more, then sit on the story for a while.
For Trump the wildest accusation by any random Democrat, bureaucrat, or never Trumper is treated as gospel truth with no serious vetting.
_That_ is what passes for “journalism” today.
What the WSJ did is the big question. You can't blame the reporter if he took it to his editors and they said no, which is what seems to have happened at the NYT.
That's where liberal journalism is today.
Official government transcripts of official government meetings by local elected officials are no longer considered credible evidence when they go against the liberal media narrative.
-PJ
” ... Times spokeswoman said that the ‘records were inconclusive’ and the potential story required further sourcing.”
Since when did that ever stop the NYT from running with a story? Oh; this was about a Darling of the Democrats.
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