Is The Truth Loud Enough?

Journalist JANE MAYER has risen to the top of her profession at a moment when her work has never mattered more. But can it make a difference?

- Molly Langmuir

It’s a few weeks after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, and Jane Mayer, one of the most prominent investigative reporters in the country, has just finished a stunning professional run. She and her New Yorker colleague Ronan Farrow broke the Christine Blasey Ford accusations, then followed that with the account of Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale. These pieces helped trigger the political spectacle—a “partisan inferno,” as Farrow puts it—that led to Ford and Kavanaugh’s televised testimony, which captivated the country. Yet Mayer, sitting across from me at lunch, is focused only on the scoop she missed. I ask if the Kavanaugh debacle has been difficult to process. “It took me a while,” she says. “I got sick. And I’m not done yet, that’s the other thing.” Working through it? I ask. “No,” she says, and her voice becomes steelier. There had been another allegation, she explains, similar to Ramirez’s, but she hadn’t managed to get it on the record. “I’m not done reporting yet.”