No, really, I am asking. Why is the New York Times writing about it now? Why for these people?
This gets reads, this gets people's attention, and its less common then the typical case of abuse, making it interesting. It helps that they have more concrete proof the accusations were a lie, so the news paper doesn't have to worry about being on the wrong side of a sensitive topic.
but don't forget about the empathy gap. Not in the news paper, but in society at large. The idea of an innocent man getting caught up in the system is uncomfortable, but people push that thought to the back of their mind and subconsciously rationalise it away as a necessary evil to protect women (and some men) because they can't think of a way to protect the falsely accused that doesn't make it easier to get away with abusing women. In this view the potentially abused women gets more empathy over the potentially innocent man.
I think in this kind of story, where the accused are women, they're pretty much always going to be gay women.
Not for reasons of any particular animus, but because that means the putative victims are female, which people will take a lot more seriously.
For "political/cultural" topics, I generally ask does the article align with the company's/editorial staff's biases.
For important geopolitical topics, I generally ask does the article align with the company's masters' biases.
What a company chooses to cover or not cover and how a company chooses to cover a story becomes rather obvious. After a while, you can pretty much tell whether a story will be cover by a company and how they are going to spin it.
> Numerous lawsuits have been brought about this kind of thing and even won. Why is this case different?
It's hard to say. If the situation isn't special since we had numerous lawsuits like this before, then I guess we can ask what else is special? Maybe we can run down the "who,what,when,where,why". Lets start with who. Is there anything special there?