Author of Cosby book: #MeToo lost credibility by not supporting Biden's accuser

"They did not support her, they threw her under the bus," said the author of "Chasing Cosby."
People carry signs addressing the issue of sexual harassment at a #MeToo rally outside of Trump International Hotel on December 9, 2017 in New York City.
By Natalia Mittelstadt

The author of a popular book on the Bill Cosby sexual assault case says the Me Too movement lost stature by failing to defend Tara Reade last year when the media attacked her for her sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden.

"I think the Me Too movement suffered a huge credibility gap when they threw the Joe Biden accuser, Tara Reade, under the bus last year and wouldn't support her," Nicole Egan, author of "Chasing Cosby" told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Thursday. "What happened to 'Believe all women'? They did not support her, they threw her under the bus. The media went after her with all they had. I was reading the coverage, and I was shocked."

The Me Too movement began when sexual assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein were made public in 2017.

The media did not initially report on the sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby but have since caught up and in some cases apologized, according to Egan.

"In 2014, a bunch of the media actually did mea culpas, you know, starting with David Carr at the New York Times and ... Ta-Nehisi Coates, because they had written stories, and they had not included these allegations," she said.

"And then Mark Whitaker, who wrote the bio [on Cosby] that had just come out, was finally forced to admit he should have included the sexual assault allegations," Egan continued. "Even Ronan Farrow, who was with NBC at the time, wrote a mea culpa a few months later and said he was told not to ask Cosby about the sexual assaults or Whitaker. And he didn't until the very end and said he was ashamed of that interview."

Egan argues that the media could have helped bring Cosby to justice if they had reported on the sexual assault allegations earlier.

"So the sad part about this is if the media hadn't completely backed off this in 2005, [then-District Attorney Bruce] Castor might have been forced to actually complete this investigation," said the author. "There were 14 women accusing Cosby back then. The media does have the power to push this forward, and they didn't.

"And the sad thing is ... one of those other cases might have been still within the statute of limitations back then, by the time this exploded again in 2014."