THE MEDIA EMPORER HAS NO CLOTHES

B&B:

The Greatest Untold (more precisely mis-told, perverted) Monumental Story of the day is the most disgraceful episode in modern journalism: the naked assasination attempt on John McCain by the New York Times - and, equally significant and shameful, the cover-up.

The MediaMob can, and does, say virtually Anything is wishes about Anyone, without much regard for truth. Last week journalism's equivalent of the Vatican put a salacious sex & corruption story on page one. It turns out the story wasn't true, and shouldn't have appeared even in a supermarkt newspaper next to the disposal razors and chewing gum that headlines Britney Spears love life.

And they did this - with impunity! - to a genuine American hero, respected U.S. Senator, candidate for president. Imagine if they did it to you or me (thanks to a once-great rag known as the Boston Globe, I don't have to imagine). Good luck.

And now, because only the MediaMob reports on MediaMob, there is no apology. There is no examination of ethics and standards. No integrity.

Because just as the MediaMob ensured that the President Clinton Scandal would instead come to be known as the "Lewinsky Scandal", so too now is the New York Times Scandal known - thanks to the self-serving diligence of itself - as the "McCain Scandal".

It is not John McCain scandal.
The scandal is the abdication and perversion of the sacred standards of journalism by its contempoary practitioners who, in perhaps the most shameful act of all, still call themselves "journalists".

Post Script:

As to the "story" itself, oddly enough, it is the sex angle in this story that may have minimized the damage: although John McCain does in fact have a long and somewhat controversial history with lobbyists, sex overwhelms everything else. A Sex Story always trumps a Corruption Story. But if you knock down the sex, you knock down the story. So, however impluasibly, John McCain apparently walks away without serious injury - and with serious, substantial (if indirect) sympathy from the political right.
In the NY Times v. McCain bout, McCain wins the first round.

Excelsior!

JS