Articles appearing on BBC News online about the Herman Cain [R] sexual harassment claims in the 5 days after the story first broke on Politico:
Herman Cain: Sexual harassment claims ‘baseless’
Herman Cain denies sex harassment claims
Herman Cain: A ‘high-tech lynching’?
Herman Cain: When in trouble, switch stories
Herman Cain ‘gradually recalls’ sexual harassment case
Herman Cain sexual harassment accuser ‘wants to speak’
Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas, and sexual harassment
Third woman claims inappropriate behaviour from Cain
Herman Cain accuser decides not to speak
Articles appearing on BBC News online about the John Edwards [D] love child in the 5 days after the story was first reported:
Zilch. The first BBC article appeared 18 days after the news first broke.
Articles appearing on BBC News online about the Anthony Weiner [D] pervy Twitter pic in the first 5 days after the story was first reported:
Zilch. The first BBC article appeared 10 days after the news first broke.
The contrast and the bias couldn’t be clearer.
P.S. Great title DB!
One for Dezzie and Scottie , I think.
Hopefully the GOP will be looking into all this…and I doubt that Mardells laundry basket would pass muster with their snoops and smearers.
I do wonder why those attacked don`t get personal with those who seem to scrape the barrel…how much cultural slime are we expected to wade in until the Right get their dentures sharpened?
BBC-Democrat is heavily biased against Republicans politically;
BBC-Democrat takes Bill Clinton (D) as its standard of moral purity.
Is BBC-Democrat so hostile to Mr Cain coz he is black?
Succinct and clear. Nice, DB.
I remember when the BBC felt that making a fuss about salacious details of private lives was the New McCarthyism.
Whenever there has been a Conservative (in UK) involved the BBC have gone mad on accusations of immorality etc. and never rested until they forced resignation (e.g. Mellor, Parkinson). But when it’s come to Labourites caught wioth their trousers down then the BBC have been far more forgiving, Cooke, Prescott etc.
With them the BBC regard it as a private matter – with the Conservatives it’s the main story for weeks.
Demon,
It was the same with MP’s expenses. Labour were far and away the worst offenders. If you only got your news from the BBC , you would think it was the Conservatives.
Yet another one for Dezzie and Scottie !
Look at the coverage afforded to the paper-dustbin scandal – Letwin = 7 days of headlines, Cable = an afternoon of headlines, mostly an apology.
You have the BBC bang to rights, DB
Are contributors getting better at spotting this sort of bias or is it simply becoming more blatant? The examples provided seem to be multiplying at an exponential rate.
‘more blatant?’
Two (or more) wrongs make a corporation policy?
Unique.
The odd thing to me is the rationale.
The damage to the BBC’s already gutter borne credibility vs. the imnpact such propaganda will have where tangibly of use.
The BBC are more blatant than ever before.
Martin,
They don’t care any more and why should they. Cameron has made it clear that he doesn’t have the balls to do anything about it, so we can just expect everything to get worse.
Brilliant title and excellent substance.
Q.E.D.
Good article here about this very subject – the media overplaying it’s hand in regard to the allegations about Cain, and the resulting backfiring.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyharnden/100115731/american-way-a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-herman-cain-lynching/
9 nil? and 9 nil…hmmm BBC, are you racist? I mean look at the way you hammer Obama over his multiple gaffes and dodgy contacts…oh.
Mark Mardell:-
“The puzzle remains. If he was found to be innocent why would his employers make a payout?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15530122
Sheesh. But it’s OK, ‘morally superior’ people are allowed to do this.
Mardell knows damn well that in the ambulance-chasing US legal system, where there is no “loser pays” rule, employers are on a hiding to nothing if employees bring spurious charges – it is cheaper to make a nominal “get rid of the nuisance” payment than to fight the case even if they win.
But Mardell would rather let the unsubstantiated smear continue. Guilty until proven innocent ?
Neither “nuisance” payment was really substantial. One of the claims was made a long time after the employee had left.
The word blatant can, and has been bandied about, but this is beyond the pale.
As you point out, ‘the system’ makes it near impossible to do anything but pay out, yet Tub of Mardell is attempting to make this sorry attempt at gutter journalism persist on a basis that would make a NoTW ex-editor blush.
And, lucky for him, the thread is now closed, so this nasty little poison can seep as long as it likes unchallenged.
JA, we’re certainly not talking anywhere near Paula Jones figures.
When Clinton groped and sexually assaulted and cheated on his wife and exploited a young woman in his employ, that was a private matter, none of our business, did not affect his qualifications as President, and lying under oath was merely “lying about sex”.
Yet when an intoxicated Herman Cain is accused of telling a woman she’s beautiful, suddenly it calls his fitness for office into question.
Here are the views about the double standard in the media of a woman who accused Clinton of sexual misbehaviour –
http://www.breitbart.tv/clinton-harassment-accuser-willey-id-vote-for-cain/
Everything she says applies in spades to the BBC.
I’m sure this will be covered on the BBC, given how it’s always so keen to cover all angles. And pigs might present the news.
Heartbreak for the BBC’s Washington crowd – they rushed out the latest Cain story but that darned Jackson trial knocked them off the top spot after only 40 minutes.
The sneaky Beeboids left out the link to their report than one of the women decided not to speak publicly.
And I mean rushed – here’s the second paragraph:
“The unnamed woman’s appearance at a news conference in New York would the first time any of Mr Cain’s accusers have made a public statement.”
In case the BBC doesn’t have it – or tries a little of their patented selective editing – here’s a link to what will be the live feed from Arizona of Cain’s press conference today about these allegations. It starts at 10pm UK time.
Unfortunately I’ll have to be out at that time, but will try to catch the replay this evening.
I actually made it back in time to catch Cain’s press conference live. Sadly, I think he’s toast. He said he didn’t remember Sharon Bialek, the woman who has gone public, and didn’t remember her even after seeing her appearance today on Fox News.
But Bialek herself said that she saw him last month at a Tea Party event in Illinois. And there are Tea Party-connected witnesses to that effect. Apparently she even hugged him and whispered in his ear. Which seems odd from someone who has been troubled for the last decade over an “unwanted advance”, which in some reports has been described as much worse than that.
Now we hear to that the fact that her fiancé says she only told him about it over the weekend. There is of course the well-populated school of thought that women hide this stuff even from men to whom they’re close, so it’s impossible for me to decide if that’s a red flag or not.
So either Cain is lying, or she was just one of the multitude of people who come up to a candidate – or any celebrity – for a minute and think they’ve really met them and made in impression. He said today that he doubts he’ll be having an “aha moment”, where he suddenly remembers her. Which means he’s either going to lie for a few more days and drop out of the race, or hang in there while the media destroys him.
Cain did, though, address the settlement about which Mardell encourages doubts. The charges were baseless, and the payment was a settlement over what the NRA defined as a “personnel matter”. Which can mean a million things in the era of shoot-first-and-pretty-much-don’t-ask-questions-later regarding sexual harassment.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Cain saw the woman again last month, and that she’s a Republican who attended a Tea Party event, I’d say he passed. Although he didn’t deal too well with the unprofessional sneer from the New York Times (a paper who has never taken that tone with The Obamessiah). He handled the offensive question from CNN much better.
But I think it’s too late. The media will destroy him quickly. And Mardell will behave unprofessionally and crow about it. I hope I’m wrong.
I think enough doubts have been placed now. Lots of callers on talk radio are still fully behind him but increasingly one hears, “I like Herman Cain, but...” If he were a Democrat I could see him surviving – the Networks plus CNN/MSNBC would do all they could to save him. But he’s a Republican, and a black one at that. They’re going to go in for the kill.
Hmm. Bialek may have previous with falsely accusing people of sexual harrassment. If true, it’s a new ball game.
David
Cain meets umpteen people on his campaign – the fact that a woman approaches him at an event and claims he knows her means nothing. How do we know she didn’t just buttonhole him at the event ?
I am still giving Cain the benefit of the doubt. He came across much more forcefully at the press conference than on earlier days.
It’s possible, John, but Cain made a point of saying that he has a very good memory, then qualified it as a memory for people who have made a positive impression on him. Then he stated not only that he doesn’t remember her, but that he won’t. That is weird. Even if he didn’t do anything and really doesn’t remember, it doesn’t look good.
The worst thing of all is that even if he did hit on her, it’s not a big deal at all, nothing compared to what other politicians have been given a pass for, yet now Gloria Allred has called him a serial predator. It’s going to be very difficult for to beat the new incarnation of the Journolist on this one.