Cannibals In The Media

Mayor Mike Bloomberg is upset about the way reporters speak to him, it seems.
He blew up this week at a Newsday scribe who posed a loaded question to him, implying the mayor had been utruthful in the past.
Take heart, your honor. You are not alone. Any celebrity and most politicians can go through their Rodney Dangerfield "no respect" routine with you.
But if you really want some comfort, look at how the media carve up their own for dinner.
The Times devoted four reporters on Tuesday to a story of NBC News4 anchor Sue Simmons' accidental on-air obscenity blooper for Wednesday's paper. This was the second news cycle for what should have been a one-day story: Simmons messed up, she apologized, much embarrassment for her and move on. But the Times had reporters roaming the streets of New York to hear that citizens are "shocked, shocked" to find that famous people sometimes use the f-word.
That's better than the Post. Rupert Murdoch's flagship splashed "Boozy Susie" on its front page wood, and quoted several people, not one of them named, suggesting Sue Simmons drank too much during the break between her two newscasts, strongly implying without ever saying it that she was drunk during the mishap.
The Post and Times and every other paper, including Newsday, also made great hay out of the altercation between Newsday's Michael Frazier and Bloomberg. Frazier prefaced his question by saying the mayor "maintained" that he kept on open dialogue with the family of Sean Bell. Bloomberg blew his stack because the word suggested he has lied. The Times went to the dictionary and showed that the word, in its simplest form, benignly means to assert or claim. But n fairness to the mayor, it does indeed have a negative connotation, as if to say "you persist in saying x, when everyone knows y."
Although he had a point (and probably a prior bone to pick with the reporter) Bloomberg could have been more gracious. He chose the political life, and he knows the adage about when you can't stand the heat.
But at least he can take comfort that there's no double standard among reporters when it comes to watching words.