Nearly a month ago, the National Enquirer broke the news that a massage therapist in Oregon claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Al Gore. Since then, the media has snickered, rolled its eyes and steadfastly refused to report the story. Instead, they’ve trotted out excuses in Gore’s defense, often treating it as a simple choice between defending Gore’s integrity or indulging in a base appetite for celebrity scandal, as if there wasn’t a real possibility that a real 54-year-old woman had suffered a very real and violent assault.

Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women, Action & the Media, and editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, joins The Nation on Grit TV to describe how the media should handle the sexual assault allegations against Gore.

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