The same thing seems to happen over and over again. A horrific sexual assault is perpetrated by people who are more powerful against someone who is less powerful. If the assault gets reported by the media, the victim is almost immediately called a liar, and the wheels of the power machine start turning to discredit the victim or the people who reported the story, or anyone else whose punishment can make the story disappear.
How many other publications is the Columbia Journalism Review going to critique this year?
How many other news stories are published every day, that aren't about the rape of a less powerful person by more powerful people, but that would get the same, or worse, rating for journalistic integrity in reporting that the November 19, 2014 Rolling Stone article "A Rape On Campus" got from the writers from CJR if all of those stories were subjected to the same standards and level of scrutiny that were applied to the Rolling Stone article?
For years, I have publicly deplored the conglomerate's code distortions of news stories, yet those distortions have never stopped. Those distortions, even when they are meant by their publishers to be in favor of what I consider to be morality, are misleading to the public about the subjects that are ostensibly being reported. Thousands of coded news stories have been published on the front pages and throughout newspapers and magazines, and broadcast on the radio, television and the Internet. I don't even know how many times I have said "Can't you just report the news?"
In 5 years of dealing with the conglomerate media, I have yet to read or hear anything, other than my own protests, that criticizes the practice of coding news stories to be about something other than what they are supposed to be about. Who knows how many of the purported facts presented are accurate, and who is trying to find out?
Most of the time, the coding is done to promote sexual violence, with much amusement resulting from the conglomerate while one publication after another leers and sneers.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 6, 2015 @ 9:34 a.m.
