Only two people know what really happened between Lucy Flores and Joe Biden, but everyone seems to have an opinion on the subject.

Maybe you believe Biden is a serial space-invader, an anachronism in the age of #MeToo, and he owes Flores an apology. Or maybe you believe Flores supported Bernie Sanders, so she must be exaggerating or lying. Or maybe you believe Biden did something but Flores thought nothing of it back when she was using him to boost her sagging campaign fortunes but now wants to make the national media circuit. Maybe you believe these conclusions would not mitigate the fact that Creepy Joe was and is… creepy.

Take your pick. Or better yet: Don’t.

The questions raised by this are more important than whether it hinders Biden’s incipient presidential run. I am much more interested in — and concerned by — the effect on an important cultural conversation about how women are treated and how journalists handle these stories.

I have covered politics for nearly three and a half decades. I have had too many conversations with women about what they have had to endure in the political world. As I mentioned when I wrote about our coverage of the Mark Manendo investigation in Carson City, I feel some regret not doing more about it when I first heard of his behavior.

But Manendo was only an extreme example of what happens in an intoxicating world where men — elected officials, staffers, lobbyists — are given power over women and abuse it in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Manendo was clumsy and cloddish; Ruben Kihuen was clueless and conniving. But other examples are even more insidious.

Female lobbyists or interns preyed on by legislators who can kill their bills or affect their employment. Female candidates who can’t just pick up a campaign check at an office, but are forced to go to dinner with the donor, whose room key then comes out before dessert. Female elected officials who are treated differently by their male counterparts — sexism that manifests itself in a system that is called a Good Old Boys network for a reason.

A female-majority Legislature is a good start, and the reckoning here and elsewhere that began a few years ago and continues to this day is long overdue. I am glad that our reporting on Kihuen helped empower women to tell their stories and eventually exposed him for what he did.

Which brings me to the case of Lucy Flores and Joe Biden, which I believe should be a line of demarcation in these stories for both the #MeToo movement and journalism.

All of these stories are not equal, but some are more equal than others. And if we do not accept this — as journalists, as human beings — the results will truly be Orwellian.

Take all of the existing issues with such stories, including the encounter between Flores and Biden when only two of them know the truth and neither may recall it correctly, and add the backdrop of a presidential campaign with so much at stake in a crowded Democratic primary. Whatever the usual distortion field of memory and interpretation may be is exacerbated by an imbued cynicism and reflexive opportunism.

Not to mention Twitter. Twitter is not the real world. But it can be an incubator that gives birth to stories and memes that are pushed into the mainstream.

I don’t think we should circumstantially convict Flores of ulterior motives because she supported Bernie in 2016 and may want to latch onto another campaign for 2020. Nor do I think her documented affinity for attention and inability to play well with others is dispositive. Biden may well have done what she says he did, even if she acknowledges that five years later she is coming forward because he is on the cusp of another presidential bid.

But why as journalists should we not raise facts about how she has behaved in the past — some re-upped my column about her astonishing act of plagiarism — including the fact that a great many people in Nevada who interacted with her in her role as an elected official or candidate are highly skeptical of what she asserted in The Cut?

The very notion of #BelieveWomen or #BelieveAllWomen is antithetical to what we do as journalists. We didn’t just hastily publish Kihuen’s accusers’ accounts; we vetted them.

Even though I believe the reckoning is cathartic and that many if not most women are telling the truth, as journalists we have an obligation not to just blindly believe all allegations. Doing so is dangerous in another way and could lead to a slippery slope with an abyss below.

I don’t know whether Flores is telling the truth, but I do know that the #FierceFlores of 2016 might have clocked Biden if he had done what she said — her entire brand was based on not taking sexism or prejudice from anyone. And her claim in a recent interview with Jake Tapper that she had been outraged by Biden’s behavior in the 1991 Anita Hill hearings makes me wonder why she was so excited to put him in campaign materials before that 2014 event and then be seen smiling with him at the rally.

I think this is all relevant to talk about, and I do not think we should shelve our best practices to cover these stories. The messenger matters; the severity of the offense matters. And, yes, changing the culture, having these conversations matters.

These stories should not simply be “she said, he said” journalism — that kind of approach has contributed to the degradation of our profession and the disrepute in which we are held by too many. We can’t stop being journalists because we are afraid of Twitter trolls or not being part of the pack.

I am proud that The Indy has been at the forefront in Nevada in covering these stories, giving voice to women harassed by men in power. And to those who say they think we should keep doing so with fairness and context, I say:

Me, too.

Jon Ralston is the founder and editor of The Nevada Independent. He has been covering government and politics for more than thirty years. Contact him at [email protected]