Joe Scarborough has been arguing that the media should not be reporting the accusations against Bill Cosby because no law enforcement agency has taken up the charges…which, of course, they can't because the Statute of Limitations has run on them. One might note that Mr. Scarborough is doing much to publicize the charges by insisting they should not be publicized.
Says he, "Any woman can come forward right now and say 'Billy Cosby did this to me 40 years ago' and be on the cover of US Weekly. With no vetting. They will print your story, and maybe it happened. If it did, it's tragic. But if it didn't happen, you get your 15 minutes of fame." There are so many things wrong with that viewpoint…
- First off, Mr. Scarborough works for a network that presents all sorts of scandalous accusations about people without vetting; which treats the accusation itself as news. All news sources do that these days.
- Secondly, the reason most of these women didn't come forward when the alleged incidents occurred was that they had good reason to believe that their stories, taken as individual accusations, would not be believed. Several did report them and found that even the police wouldn't go there. It's like with the Al Capp matter. Many women were raped. Nothing got reported in the press even when the victims did get law enforcement to take some minor actions. It was only after Jack Anderson's newspaper column reported on one assault that other victims came forward, a pattern was established and one District Attorney said, "Hmm…maybe we ought to press charges on this matter instead of ignoring it."
- There are probably a few women in this world who would relish "15 minutes of fame" on that basis but for most, it's a terrible ordeal. They get attacked in the press and by lawyers. They get investigated and interrogated about their sex lives. They open themselves up to legal action for defamation…in this case, going up against great wealth and power. It's also just plain embarrassing for some to be viewed as a victim and it's very stressful, reliving an incident they might prefer to forget. Most sane humans do not want even fifteen minutes of that kind of fame.
I'll probably think of others after I post this. Oh, yeah. People on the news like Joe Scarbrough like to suggest you're a liar. The thing is that we live in an Internet World and if MSNBC doesn't report the charges, the online press will…and at some point, a story may get enough traction there that the so-called mainstream media has to pick up on it. They usually dip into it by saying something like, "There are widespread reports on the Internet that…" and treat the volume of the accusations as news. But they will eventually cover a story like this. And if it was a powerful politician instead of a powerful comedian, Scarborough's show wouldn't even wait for widespread reports on the web.