After an article last week reported the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations against President Trump, some readers accused The Times of downplaying the story.

Many have written to ask us why we didn’t give the allegations more attention on our website and in print. (The Times published an 800-word story on Friday evening, but did not promote the story on its home page until late Saturday morning and did not run a print story until Sunday.) Some questioned whether the lack of prominence showed too much deference to the president’s denials, or whether it even suggested misogyny or an unwillingness to believe a victim’s account.

The Reader Center took the concerns to The Times’s top editors and sat down with Dean Baquet, the executive editor.

He said the critics were right that The Times had underplayed the article, though he said it had not been because of deference to the president.