Some of the things reported in this post may not be true. But how many Troppodillians can put their hands on their hearts (well that’s tricky in itself if taken literally but you know what I mean) and say that if there was as much half way credible dirt flying around on Obama that he’d be a snowflake’s chance of it not being all over the papers. It would, naturally enough, be a ‘character issue’. Some of Kathy G’s links provide pretty amazing reads.
Nicholas – I just did not understand your first sentence – can you translate it into plain english for us please.
I assume he meant “there’d be a snowflake’s chance in hell of it not being all over the papers”. Just like I assume you meant “second sentence”.
NPOV, yes but the full stop at the end of the first sentence is not needed since the second begins with a conjunction – I just read it as one sentence – which may have caused some of my dilemma. I think he is saying that Obama’s story would be in the tabloids if there was only half the dirt on Obama that appears to be on McCain. McCain seems to have been left alone by the tabloids – at least until very recently – a proposition I only figured out after chasing the link that Nicholas referred to.
No I got it wwrong having read it again – he is not saying only half the dirt rather as much dirt but at least half credible. Not sure I am any the wiser.
Sorry – here’s a translation. If there was half as much dirt flying around about Obama it would have been all over the papers and a big drama too. Think Bill Clinton who before his election had to deal with endless publicity (all of it pretty much on the money) about what a womaniser he was. Well McCain looks like being all that and more!
I have to say I’m not convinced though. Tabloid’s first priority is selling as many papers as they can. If they thought that juicy stories on McCain would sell their papers, they would, regardless of the political inclinations of the editors-in-chief. I suspect it’s more to do with the editors making a judgement that readers wouldn’t care too much to read about McCain’s womanising, either because of the reader’s political inclinations, or because old and not particularly attractive men cheating on their wives just isn’t enough of a story.
NPOV, I didn’t speculate as to the causation of the bias, I speculated that there was bias.
The post title refers to “double standards”. That implies you belief the tabloid editors deliberately apply one standard to McCain and another to Obama. I’m suggesting there are other possible explanations as to why McCain gets one sort of treatment while, for example, Clinton got another. And further, we simply have no idea what sort of treatment Obama would get if there was some sort of evidence he was involved in anything remotely scandalous – indeed, a tabloid determined to smear Obama by implying anything scandalous would surely do so regardless of how much evidence existed.
“Deliberately”? Who said anything about ‘deliberately’. Who said anything about the political inclinations of the editors. I said they were being treated differently and you seem to agree.
And yes, one of the main concerns of newspapers is to make money. If they need double standards to make money they have double standards.
If you don’t want to call it a double standard call it something else. But I call it a double standard.
Hmm, I think you made it pretty clear you thought Obama was being treated differently to McCain simply because of the political party he belonged to (given you mentioned Clinton also). But, as I said, perhaps it’s simply because the stories about McCain aren’t as interesting to tabloid readers? There’s no double standard there: tabloid editors simple assess each story and determine whether it will make copy. If the same stories happened about Obama, they may have become interesting to tabloid readers by virtue of his age, looks, skin-colour or political inclination of the readership, though as I said, we really have no way of telling. At most you could say that the tabloid editors think their *readers* tend to apply double standards.
And FWIW, some of McCain’s behaviour alluded to by that article is surely worthy of more than just tabloid “investigation”.
NPOV,
You’re importing all sorts of things into my post that are not there. A double standard applied by a newspaper (I said nothing about tabloids btw) might well be a profit maximising move – in which case it’s (presumably) appealing to double standards in its readership.
It’s a double standard.
I will now repeat myself for emphasis.
It is a double standard.
Ok, now I’m just baffled: am I really the only person who interpreted your post as
“Tabloids have been giving McCain an easy time because of his political party, after all they didn’t do the same to Clinton, and wouldn’t do the same to Obama”?
No, you didn’t say anything about tabloids, but it IS the first word in the title of the article you linked to.
I will say the possibility that the non-tabloid newspaper readership is less likely to want to read dirt on McCain than dirt on Obama is pretty remote.
And why is this the only Troppo topic undergoing any discussion, when it’s about the least interesting?
I didn’t get it either.
Anyway, let’s move on :)
Having landed on this page largely by accident I can now confirm with the distance of many years that my post was pretty incoherent – at least on a quick read and I didn’t give it more.
Sorry