Scandalous Scoop

Secrets lead to scandals. As journalists, we feed off of this basic formula for our biggest scoops.

According to an article from The Huffington Post, the identities of the women who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment remain anonymous. This adds to Cain's politically scandalous story.

As a reporter covering the Cain development, a few legal issues are present.

First off, the choice to grant anonymity is a double-edged story. For some sources that is the only way to get them to talk, and without them there would be no story. On the other hand, because the source is unnamed, there is less accountability placed on the source to be accurate and a greater level of scrutiny on the journalist to have the facts instead of lies.

Thus far, only the attorney for one of the accusers has commented on the case. Joel P. Bennett, the attorney, said that his client will stay anonymous and decline interviews. Due to her silent approach, he said, "I could be on TV 12 hours a day easily," Bennett said. "I could be on CNN eight hours alone. Meet the Press. ABC. Next week, I'll be a nobody again."

Bennett brings up an interesting point. The public loves a good political scandal whether it be 'Weinergate' via Twitter, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, or Herman Cain. However, will the press care in a week?

Clinton was reelected after the Lewinsky scandal, but Weiner stepped down after his Twitter fiasco. Cain topped the polls when the sexual harassment allegations hit the headlines. Will he be able to recover?

Photo by Gage Skidmore

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Rage Against the Media

Photo courtesy of CreativeCommons.org

On September 17th, all was normal with Twitter. However, if you chose to glance down at trending topics, there were a couple of interesting choices:
#occupywallstreet
#sept17
#USdayofrage

If you were intrigued enough to click on one of these hashtags, the content might have surprised you. For it appeared our nation was in the middle of a giant, unexpected economic protest on Wall Street. The hacktivist group Anonymous used some of its many Twitter accounts to help organize the event, and stood among the crowd during peaceful demonstrations against 'coporate pigs' and the American government.

If you were watching the mainstream American news, you never would have heard any of it. As the day went on, Twitter users began complaining of a major media blackout against what they claimed civilians would deem to be news. And it seems to be true: the first major media company to release an article over the event was Al Jeezera English, a foreign media outlet (read the article here). In fact, while Al Jeezera released their article the same day as the popular revolution begun, it took American outlets at least a full day before they began to release any kind of coverage (see Business Week's coverage here). It was too long for the protesters, one of whom tweeted "This whole lack of news coverage thing for #occupywallstreet is kind of disturbing. Yet the asinine Glen Beck rally got all that press?"

Why did it take the American media so long to respond to a major protest on one of our country's most famous streets? For weeks, journalists have been covering foreign protests with a lot of effort and no small amount of dedication, yet the biggest news of Saturday was left to the foreign media and protesters to break themselves. There is speculation that major media corporations dragged their feet on purpose to cover it, because after all- the public was protesting specifically against corporations. Were the major news networks purposefully avoiding the subject to save their own dignity?

If journalists are going to continue referring to themselves as our nation's 'watchdog', then they need to be watching their own business moves. When you are a journalist, you don't do what's best for the corporation. You're doing what's best for your nation's civilians, and sometimes, you need to swallow your pride.

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