Bill Cosby has been confronted in the media not just about these rape accusations but also about being a condescending prick.

There was an entire feature in People magazine where they regarded him as a former college drop out that attacked recent college graduates for not being who he wanted them to be. This was published in 1985.

Philly.com ran a damning piece on him about the then most recent rape accusations combined with his "Pound Cake" tour of america in 2005.

It won several media awards and has been cited by many during this current period of accusations.

What you are seeing now is a combination of second by second media and social media which is a very different thing than 24/7 media in the halcyon days of cable news being the most up to the minute content available.

What you are also seeing is called a news peg. Stories can be reported on forever. Most editors choose not to report on them forever unless something fresh or enlightening emerges. So in journalism there is a concept called a news peg.

News pegs are something new, novel, fresh that allow for additional information or the refreshing of old information from a new context or angle.

Just because you don't understand communications or media doesn't mean you've uncovered a failing in communications or media.

The power it has had in the past is apparent. The power it has today is similar but different in that it more persistent.

Hannibal Burress' bit and the reaction to it was the news peg for the Bill Cosby story. Then more kept coming. That's why it's a bigger story now. That's why it's still in the news cycle.

News pegs defined from the online blog for a journalism course:

http://journ101.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/what-is-a-news-peg-again/

A news peg is what makes the story timely or newsworthy now. For example, you could be working for months on a story about, say, increased costs of healthcare in Massachusetts, but your news peg might be a just-announced hike in health insurance costs. It would be the element of the story that makes it timely and important now, the reason why you wouldn’t wait two weeks to run the story.

Another example: the endless array of movie stars who are guests on the late-night shows. Those folks don’t usually show up on those shows because they like to chat with Letterman or Colbert; they do it because — you guessed it — they have a movie or project coming out. That is the ‘news peg’ for having them on the program then. The reason to do it, and do it now.

And you ALWAYS want to have a news peg for your story. If there isn’t an obvious one, you will look for one, because it will make your story stronger. It gives your reader/viewer/listener more reason to pay attention and how it connects to the here and now, instead of looking like a random story that was done because the reporter was really interested in the topic.




>it wasn't this big.
>and it's the exact same story.
>
>it used to be printed once, in small print.
>now it's printed multiple times, in big print.
>
>ppl are aware of it now, but most ppl had never hear it
>before.
>where am i missing the ball here?
>
>how did the media not turn the tide of public opinion around
>overnight?
>
>