A New York Times columnist who has repeatedly risen to the defense of U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner is now publicly accepting "blame," saying that she "deeply" regrets a column she wrote defending the Democratic nominee, who put his Maine campaign on hold this week after being accused of rape.
Apologies from the rest of the paper’s staff for the newspaper’s oddly gentle treatment of Platner haven’t yet emerged, but they’d be warranted.
"While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself," Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes. "Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was ‘nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.’" In retrospect, Goldberg now acknowledges, "If anything, he seems to be significantly worse."
Even the apology doesn’t quite do justice to how deeply in the tank Goldberg was for Platner. She didn’t defend him only in that October column; she also wrote a May 8, 2026 column headlined "Graham Platner Is No Nazi." It went on: "Platner, from a young age, seems to have seen the Palestinians as one oppressed people among many. His condemnation of Israel, unlike that of some of the country’s right-wing enemies, has nothing to do with its Jewish character, but with its killing and dispossession of a subject population, a stance shared by many left-wing Jews."
Goldberg gave the October 16, 2025 Doft Lecture at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, where she explained the Times’s lack of pro-Trump columnists by saying the paper has a hard time finding people who are "pro-Trump, honest, and not racist."
That followed a May 4, 2026 column by Timesman Frank Bruni—who is also the Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke: "If Democrats Have Appropriate Fear of Trump, They Will Elect Platner."
Nor is the opinion section the only part of the Times that has been plumping for Platner.
The news section of the paper greeted his campaign launch with a write-up that was extensive for what a headline acknowledged was a "Long-Shot Bid" by a "Political Novice." In passing, it noted Platner’s "light social media footprint," which proved to be a spectacularly inaccurate assessment given that Platner’s deleted Reddit posts have caused his campaign a few headaches.
When Platner’s former girlfriends alleged abusive behavior, the Times published an oddly framed story that began with Platner himself, then in paragraph four quoted "several women … describing Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner, and saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended." Only after that did the Times get into the real news, which is that Platner had "toxic" relationships, which is a charitable way to put it.
One of Platner’s ex-girlfriends, Lyndsey Fifield, took to social media to fault the Times for failing to follow leads she gave them. "The line most shared from the piece was the claim that the Times ‘could not corroborate’ my story despite talking to two of my friends. I gave them the contact information for five friends. They called the two who I clarified would not know about the abuse but would be able to affirm our relationship timeline, events, etc. They simply did not call the other three," she said.
Another ex-girlfriend mentioned in the Times article, Jenny Racicot, later went to Politico with the allegation that Platner raped her. "My part of the story was just a read-over," Racicot told Politico. "And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated."
A Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, defended the Times article, describing it as a "revealing and sensitive" report.
He told the Washington Free Beacon, "The Times’s article on June 4 brought to light a pattern of unsettling behavior by Graham Platner and included many of the details that women shared with us that were on the record and confirmable. The article also provided readers with context about what the women were and were not willing to share at the time. It was a revealing and sensitive piece of reporting that helped Maine voters and others learn more about Platner and his candidacy. Politico advanced this public understanding with even more information that they independently reported."
In addition to that, Jodi Kantor, who was so famous for her New York Times "Me Too" coverage of Harvey Weinstein and others that a Hollywood movie got made about her and her reporting partner, went on CNN to convey that Platner’s abuses don’t meet the classic "Me Too" pattern in which the abuser is an employer or someone in a position of power.
"The accusations against Graham Platner are not classic #MeToo accusations" because "they're not about a boss and a young female employee being subjected to sexual advances" and are "not like classic abuse allegations." She went on: "These are pretty different accusations than, say, the one that, the ones that President Trump faced … and so I think it speaks to the kind of confusion … in which, like, gender-related accusations get bundled together. But they're actually very different."
While it might have been technically accurate, Kantor had appeared on a New York Times podcast describing the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh as a #MeToo case when they did not fit the parameters she laid out, and it came off as a defense of Platner that a Republican in the same position almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten.
The New York Times did write a piece pointing out that Platner wasn’t as "working class"’ as he claimed, but that piece came late in the campaign and was largely a wrapup of material that had already been reported earlier by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, summed it up: "The latest allegations against Graham Platner are very serious, but let’s not kid ourselves about what’s going on here. The Democrats were willing to look past his other serious misconduct because they agreed with his left-wing views. His main sin in their eyes is that he’s now losing to Susan Collins. Whatever retread candidate they find to replace Platner may not have Nazi tattoos or abuse women, but will definitely share his radical socialist agenda. And Susan Collins will beat that person too."
