The Edwards story came out when he was already a private citizen, remember? Now how is that comparable to anything?
There’s just not much point for the media or anyone to hound one of those except out of prurience. There’s no payoff, either - there can’t be a satisfying denouement of a powerful pol resigning in disgrace to report on.
The Menendez child-prostitution “story” turned out to be a politically-motivated lie, as you may recall. Or you may not, depending on who you use for a news source.
He was a private citizen running for president, so there’s no element of official wrongdoing or misuse of public funds, but it’s not much of an argument. Herman Cain was a private citizen when a small parade of women accused him of sexual harassment and that was a big deal.
There was nothing to the Menendez story, and the lack of coverage suggests most news outlets (the ones without an anti-Democrat axe to grind) didn’t think there was enough the story. They were right, and treating the accusation as credible would’ve been poor journalism. Maybe they should get credit for looking into the accusations and getting one right for a change since the entire thing was not just false, but made up as a smear. The Times did a bad job with the McCain/lobbyist story and that’s pretty much all there is to it. A story saying he had close ties to a lobbyist could’ve been worthwhile in some contexts, but they had no basis to suggest they might’ve been having an affair. “Some aides were worried about it” was not enough to justify reporting it that way.
The context here is not that anyone is claiming that the Menendez story should have been reported. The suggestion is that it might have been reported had he been a Republican, ala CBS with GWB and the NYT with McCain.
But maybe not. The guy who brought up Menendez was Ravenman, who claimed that “the Washington Post, NBC, and CBS did multiple stories on Senator Bob Menendez visiting underage prostitutes” in an attempt to prove that the media treats Democrats as harshly as Republicans. I’m questioning whether his facts are true and observing that - if anything - the incident would seem to show the opposite of his claim.
You guys seem to be hung up on scandals. I’m thinking more in terms of my stereotypical conception of what a Democrat looks like.
For example, I tend to think that Republicans have a completely unearned reputation for fiscal rectitude. They act like they’re the responsible daddies who will take mommy Democrat’s credit card away and make the tough spending decisions, yet when they gain control over the government they spend like drunken sailors. They seem to have built-in credibility when it comes to fiscal matters, when the evidence suggests irresponsibility.
As for Democrats, I’ve noticed that nominally liberal types in the school reform/charter school movement keep managing to spread their grift to new marks, despite all the evidence that the “reform” doesn’t make the schools better and is mainly about busting teacher unions and lining the pockets of the reformers. It seems like Republican reformers get called out faster, probably because their reform efforts always seem to involve religion. But neoliberal hucksters have had a pretty good track record in getting states and school districts to buy in, and for landing on their feet when the voters wise up and give them the boot.
Broadly speaking, I’d say that Democratic party has retained much of its credibility on labor issues, even as the party’s actual support for labor has waned as they’ve come to rely more on Wall Street and corporations for campaign funding as union membership declines.
Not really. It was a big local story but the national media didn’t really dig in until about a week later. I think Politico and Washington Post covered the story but the shit hit the fan when Dems on Capitol Hill started calling for his resignation.
As I previously pointed out, the reporter who wrote the mea culpa states that reporters were aware of the “incessant” rumors floating around about Filner but didn’t bother to investigate. The story probably would have broken sooner if reporters would have done their jobs.
Of course it was stupid. The paper was too busy doing a fluff piece on Weiner and attempting to rehab his image to ask the most obvious question. Would he have lied? Of course…but that’s a poor excuse not to excercise due diligence in reporting.
My original point, which I see is incorrect, was that Spitzer would have been outed by the federal investigation and the Times broke the story before that happened. Reading further it does not appear that the clients were going to be outed and, certainly, none were charged.
That being said the results were the same for Spitzer and Vitter. Both took a pounding in the media. Why is Vitter still in office while Spitzer resigned? I don’t know other than Vitter got out ahead of the story and, maybe, it says something about the electorate of Louisiana.
Cute. But it does not change the fact that I have not changed the terms. I admitted my mistake. Now, please try to stay on topic as opposed to accusing me of doing something I did not do.
They didn’t count anything as ‘liberal’ shows. That was me. My reasoning was that conservatives see public radio as liberal, so I counted the public radio shows as such.
Well you would be wrong. I have read both the story and the note. The story was a drive-by hit job. Throw the rumor out there and wait for the sharks to smell the blood in the water. Of course, I didn’t reference the note or the settlement so I’m not sure how I mischaracterized those.
What I think Mr. Hump refers to is the alleged forgeries which led to Dan Rather’s downfall.
Great strategy by the Bush team! They knew the charges were true, constructed fake evidence for the true charges, and demonstrated the fakeness on cue. Outrage turned onto the fakers, assumed to be on Kerry’s team. That the charges were true even if that particular evidence was fake got ignored in the confusion.
The audacity of that ploy suggests the cunning of Karl Rove might have been involved. I suggested this in a thread 2 years ago or so, in which the SDMB’s Republican Apologist-in-Chief made a fool of himself.
[ol]
[li]Governor is more of a hands-on job than senator, so Spitzer had less opportunity to just lie low for a while.[/li][li]Spitzer built his entire career on his crime-fighting prosecutor’s resume (including anti-prostitution campaigns) so the hypocrisy stung worse in his case.[/li][li]To some extent it was just different decisions by different people. Perhaps Spitzer could have hung on.[/li][/ol]
I wouldn’t go nearly that far in characterizing Benghazi but I do think it would have gotten a lot more play, and reporters would have been at least a little intellectually curious, if it happened under a Republican administration. The media showed very little interest in getting to the bottom of this story from the start and don’t seem to be any more eager now. I thought when CNN ran this story that the media would look a little deeper or, at least, ask the president one questions concerning the report during a press conference. Nothing.
It’s like chasing a squirrel around the back yard. Since something cannot be absolutely proven then it must not be the case. Or, unless the bias is absolute then there is no bias whatsoever.