I already explained why. I’m sorry, but he does not say what you want him to have said. (I’m not actually sorry.)
The latest sexting story was broken by the New York Daily News. I think you need to decide what the mainstream media is, because the Daily News is one of the biggest papers in the country. (I think they got the story because his sexting partner went right to them.)
That’s stupid. Of course Weiner would have lied anyway, but that’s one of the reasons I don’t like the forgiveness industry.
And he told his staff because a newspaper was about to run a report saying he was using prostitutes. It looks to me like you’re again looking to change the terms of the discussion here.
I didn’t say they were. However, I’m not sure if any of the newspapers I’ve listed have even once since Eisenhower endorsed the Republican candidate for President.
When Der Trihs claimed “the media is strongly pro-Republican” he was aggressively on denial of reality.
Well, the Chicago Tribune has a very conservative history, and according to this, the first Democrat it ever endorsed for POTUS – since the paper was founded in 1847 – was Obama in 2008.
He is saying exactly what I said. There’s no other way to read it. Even when the first women were coming forward the press showed little curiosity. How many of those women came forward before the press took notice?
Actually The Dirty broke the story. I think you need to decide who the mainstream media is.
Yes, very stupid to expect a reporter to actually ask an obvious question.
What’s your point?
I thought you would understand what breaking a story entails. Were they first? Yes. Did they break the story? No, they received information about a federal investigation. They knew the story was coming so they want to be first. That’s quite different than investigating and uncovering the truth.
I’m not changing the terms at all. I was under the impression that the story broke after Spitzer got word from the Feds and alerted his staff. If that’s incorrect then I stand corrected. Doesn’t change any terms though.
Sam Zell is lots of things, but a Republican he isn’t.
Also, if they’re endorsing Obama that’s hardly evidence of them being “strongly pro-Republican” to use Der Trih’s word.
Beyond that, the New York Times and the Washington Post are far more influential and they have long been known for endorsing Democratic candidates for President.
Anyway, perhaps Der Trihs would be willing to come forward and present the evidence to back up his ridiculous claim that the media is “strongly pro-Republican.”
The media has to pretend the Republican party is a lot less stupid than it actually is in order to appear non partisan. A non biased media would have to spend about 90% of it’s time pointing out how idiotic they are.
Thank you, BrainGlutton. Based on voter interviews, it is very clear Kerry would have won the 2004 election were it not for the (fabricated) “questions” about his military background.
What a shame that even a Doper still has a “faded bumper sticker on his pickup” to maintain the lies.
But the most significant aspect of the Weiner scandal was that it was very very funny. Editors would have to have been thinking, “There’s a story brewing about a politician most Americans have never heard of but which, if true, will be very very funny and even ties in with his funny name”.
Once the story was confirmed as true and the sexting-dick pic-Weiner connection was made did the story explode and there was no holding back the nation’s inner 10-year-old. So it’s only in retrospect, you think the story should have been broken sooner.
Bull. When three women accused the mayor of a large city of sexual harassment at a press conference, it was big news.
Ok, you’re right there.
I was saying it was stupid that the reporter didn’t ask. That said, he would have been lied to and there’s no reason to think anyone would have found out otherwise. (Weiner was using a private site this time, not Twitter, and he was caught because his ‘friend’ was unhappy and went public.)
What’s my point? Why did you mention this in the first place? You said Spitzer was caught up in a federal prosecution. I presume you mentioned this because it has something to do with the way the story broke, and I was pointing out that Vitter got caught the exact same way. The outcome was completely different.
I do. The issue here is that you want it to mean something else.
Then they broke the story.
And away go the goalposts! The Times learned from sources that Spitzer was one of the men who patronized the prostitution ring. He was not a target of the investigation and his name did not appear in the report, but they learned that he was one of the clients. They were the first to report that information, therefore they broke the story. The end. Would someone else have eventually gotten the information if they didn’t? Probably, but that’s true of almost any story. They broke that news.
Words mean whatever I want them to mean, said Humpty Dumpty.
You underestimate the power of denial. ‘He didn’t say what he said’ and ‘That depends on what the meaning of the word is, is’ are foundational to the ability of liberals to deny what is in front of them.
The position can be summed up
[ul][li]There is no liberal bias[/li][li]That isn’t liberal bias[/li][li]If there is any liberal bias, it is perfectly justified, and[/li][li]There is no liberal bias[/li][li]No it isn’t[/li][li]No it isn’t[/li][li]No it isn’t[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
Thus far, we seem to be coming up empty in terms of identifying a clear-cut example of an IOKIADDI rule in political media. There seems to be no Democratic equivalent of Watergate, for example, that was just brushed under the rug because it happened to have been done by a Democrat. All we’ve come up with is a dog’s breakfast of minor stories like some rumor of a McCain affair, William Jefferson’s corruption scandal, Bob Filner, that really don’t make a strong case one way or the other.
Maybe this was an intractable topic all along, because it requires agreement on what constitutes a real scandal; and further, requires agreement on what constitutes real media scrutiny. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, for example, said that you’d have to add Iran Contra and Watergate together, and multiply that by ten, to even approach the magnitude of Benghazi. To the extent he actually believes that, presumably he’d say there’s IOKIADDI at work.
I think the bottom line is that there’s the blatantly partisan left-wing media, the blatantly partisan right-wing media, and then a bunch of outlets that are somewhere in between (call them “mainstream”). While I’m willing to grant that on the margin the mainstream media may lean left in certain contexts, the overriding force seems to be the desire to attract readers/viewers, which accounts for why there was no hesitation to pile on when it became clear that the Edwards story had legs.
“Soft.” Heh. Really, the only person I can think of who got away with his six scandal recently is David Vitter.
What are they counting as “liberal” shows? The shows distributed by the mainstream public radio producers—NPR, PRI, APM, etc.—are not liberal shows. The liberal shows are the Pacifica Radio shows, and I don’t think that most liberals listen to them.
Whether the editorial page of a newspaper endorses Republicans or Democrats is a separate issue of whether the news reporting reflects bias one way or another. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has a joke of an editorial page, which is so biased that it amounts to a daily propaganda rag, but has pretty respectable news pages.
I think when presented with a blatant scandal, there’s no free pass for anyone.
But I think the phenomenon exists, and it appears in more subtle circumstances, and i think you illustrate it in that sentence.
“…When it became clear that the Edwards story had legs,” then, as you say, everyone did pile on. But what about before it had legs? Do you make room for the possibility that if the subject is Edwards, once-time VP candidate and a strong Democratic presence in the Senate, there’s a bit more reluctance to report on – or investigate – a story about a mistress and a possible misuse of campaign funds to hush her up? That if the subject of that same rumor were a Republican, there would have been more eagerness to investigate and uncover the truth?
Now, it’s been suggested above that this disparity is natural, because Republicans are known to use words like “family values,” and Democrats don’t. If that’s an acceptable excuse, then we have indeed shown there’s a whole category of IOKIADDI. It’s OK to cheat on your wife and father a child with your mistress if you’re a Democrat, because Democrats don’t claim to be for family values?
I don’t agree with that distinction, but perhaps it’s compelling.
Did you read the Times’ story? Or their “note” on the story? Having read both last night, I’m pretty sure you didn’t, because you are mischaracterizing the story, the “note” (that’s not a retraction or correction), and the settlement.
I can’t find the individual stories, but this right-wing source states: “From January 24 through the morning of February 11 there have been a total of just seven stories (CBS three, NBC four) aired on the Big Three network’s evening (ABC World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s This Morning, NBC’s Today) shows.” It goes on to complain that other networks and newspapers aren’t running the story.
Here is one WaPo story on it, here is another, and I know I saw one more last night that I can’t get to behind the Post’s paywall.
He seems pretty well familiar with the concept: in almost every post of this thread, yorick73 has changed the meaning of a word to suit his own purposes.
It’s not clear what “the story” is, as Menendez was facing two scandals at the same time, both related. One was that he took/did favors from/for a big campaign contributer. The other was that this same campaign contributer was somehow involved in his procuring underage prostitutes.
You’ll notice that the “right wing source” refers to a NYT editorial which they felt should have spurred the networks into a frenzy of stories, but that NYT editorial mentioned only the financial angle and steered clear of the prostitution angle, which indicates that this source was lumping the two together. So you need to establish that the “seven stories” mentioned were about the prostitution angle, and not about the influence peddling like the NYT.
“Story on it” is misleading.
I said in my earlier post that “I don’t recall seeing anything in the MSM until the story became “Menendez Smeared by Fake Story””, and these stories are exactly of this nature.
The first is a spirited defense of the media for not reporting the incident, based on the claim that the story has no basis. The second is the report of an FBI investigation which - as noted in the very first sentence of the article - “has found no evidence to support the claim”.
