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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2008-08-09

Metacognition At Its Self-Absorbed Most Ridiculous 

At the very least, the "professional" journalist class bothered to notice its bias.

Reticence of the Mainstream Media Becomes Story Itself

For almost 10 months, the story of John Edwards’s affair remained the nearly exclusive province of the National Enquirer — through reports, denials, news of a pregnancy, questions about paternity and, finally, a slapstick chase through a hotel in Beverly Hills.

Political blogs, some cable networks and a few newspapers reported on it — or, more accurately, reported on The Enquirer reporting on it. Jay Leno and David Letterman made Mr. Edwards the butt of jokes on their late-night shows, but their own networks declined to report on the rumors surrounding him on the evening news. Why? . . .

Fox News Channel, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald and the Web site of New York Magazine were among those that first mentioned The Enquirer reports in late July. MSNBC did so only back-handedly, by showing a clip of Mr. Letterman joking about it. . . .

Bill Keller, the executive editor, said in an e-mail message that Mr. Edwards’s dark-horse status and the “added hold-your-nose quality about The Enquirer” contributed to the lack of interest by The Times and the mainstream media generally.


Let's all just wait and see how that "hold-your-nose quality" applies when McCain's Veep starts to get vetted by the press. Or, for that matter, where was that "hold-your-nose quality" when the Mark Foley story broke?

Occam's Razor holds that, all things being equal, the most likely explanation for a phenomenon is, most often, the correct explanation. Tell me, what's more likely: the "professionals" didn't appreciate getting beaten to a story by the Enquirer, the "professionals" didn't believe a story in the Enquirer, or the "professionals" preferred not to have a person they thought could still be a viable Democratc candidate someday torn down by a tawdry affair?

Yeah. I think so, too.
Posted by: Michael / 8/09/2008 12:38:00 AM

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