Echo chambers are strange, weird places. And the media’s echo chamber sometimes gets very weird indeed.
Take the E. Jean Carroll story.
The media can’t really talk to her because when they interview her, she says things like this.
Anderson Cooper went straight to commercial right after this comment. pic.twitter.com/hkM7KCYw71
— Cameron Cawthorne (@Cam_Cawthorne) June 25, 2019
Between her book push, the timing and her claim that she wouldn’t press charges because it would be disrespectful to all the women being raped at theorder, she has rather little natural credibility. Since the media couldn’t properly talk about her accusation, it began talking about why it’s not talking about it, leading to a rash of strange stories in which the media discusses the importance of covering the story it’s not covering.
That leads to three types of recursive media non-stories.
1. Discussing why the E. Jean Carroll story hasn’t gotten as much coverage as it should.
2. Wondering whether people have become jaded by Trump’s orangemanbadness
3. Accusing the New York Post and some assorted right-wing conspiracy of suppressing the story.
All of these secondary lens stories are ways to avoid talking about the poor credibility of the central story.
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