As it happens I think the media campaign against the burly cop resulted in the correct verdict but I'm sad the attention was on skin colour and not police brutality. Had George Floyd been a white girl and Chauvin a black cop, there would have been no media campaign and probably no trial, let alone no GUILTY verdict.
Absolutely NO chance of truth emerging had both parties been white.


I know nothing about the Super League but media coverage has won too; the simplistic slogan of "Don't Kill Football" succeeded. We won't see any media campaign for the possible future death of football due to other, more complex reasons.

I think you are spot on with this.

The media is effectively neutral (or amoral?) and only wants the story. So we get a nasty cop convicted because of race when it was probably not about race. "Probably" because there is no evidence race had anything to do with it.

We get a football proposal overturned because it was obvious that everyone in football thought (rightly or wrongly) that the idea stank, when really the bigger issue was the already systemic bias towards a wealthy few in football stifling competition already.

Story wins; real issues carry on under cover of the story.

And it's not the media to blame WYOT - it's US! We simply accept the exaggerated story; rather as most did over Covid. We choose a simple tabloid headline slogan over any thinking of depth every time.

JK2006 wrote:
And it's not the media to blame WYOT - it's US! We simply accept the exaggerated story; rather as most did over Covid. We choose a simple tabloid headline slogan over any thinking of depth every time.

Yes and I am frustrated and disappointed that only a tiny minority of those with "influence" all across the media have spoken out against the Covid hegemony, which deliberately conflates lockdown scepticism with covid scepticism and conspiracy theories. I just can't believe they can't see the over reaction or even the possibility of over reaction. Where are the otherwise intelligent commentators? Dawkins, Fry (sorry!), Bragg, Douglas Murray, Niall Ferguson, Chomsky, Mary Beard and on and on and on....Lord Sumption and Peter Hitchens have cut a shamefully lonely furrow, I think.

Matthew Parris dared to speak up.

JK2006 wrote:
Matthew Parris dared to speak up.

Yes he did actually and I think is one of the best columnists around; as well as talking sense on most things. He would have made a good PM!

Quote Jonathan King, "Had George Floyd been a white girl and Chauvin a black cop, there would have been no media campaign and probably no trial, let alone no GUILTY verdict."?

Er, still breathing while black Bill Cosby, 83, was found GUILTY of felony sex assault and is serving a three-to 10-year prison term.

Cosby has been the subject of HIGHLY PUBLICIZED accusations of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct, the earliest of which were said by his accusers to have taken place in the mid-1960s.

In October 2014, a part of comedian Hannibal Buress's comedy routine that described sexual misbehavior by Cosby went viral, resulting in more women coming forward to state that they were assaulted by Cosby. The dates of the alleged incidents span from 1965 to 2008 across ten U.S. states and one Canadian province.

Cosby has repeatedly denied the allegations and maintained his innocence. In November 2014, he responded to a question about the allegations and said: "I don't talk about it." In past interviews that were made public, Cosby declined to discuss the accusations. However, he told Florida Today, "People shouldn't have to go through that and shouldn't answer to innuendos."

In May 2015, he said, "I have been in this business 52 years and I've never seen anything like this. Reality is a situation and I can't speak."

In the wake of the allegations, numerous organizations have severed ties with Cosby, and honors and titles that were previously awarded to him have been revoked. Reruns of The Cosby Show and other shows featuring Cosby have also been pulled from syndication by many organizations. 25 colleges and universities have rescinded honorary degrees. In an attempt to explain the backlash against Cosby, Adweek reporter Jason Lynch noted that the "media landscape has changed considerably—and has now been joined by the far-less-forgiving social media arena."

apnews.com/article/bill-cosby-new-mug-sh...e2acdffab68c0677f192