Saturday, July 09, 2011

NPR's On The Media Revisits Chiquita-Enquirer Scandal

NPR's program On the Media devoted a very in-depth segment of the radio program yesterday on the Cincinnati Enquirer-Chiquita voice-mail hacking scandal form the late 1990's.  This was another follow-up piece from the fallout from the News of the Wolrd phone hacking problem in England, which resulted in the most read weekly newspaper in Britain ceasing operations for good.  Yes, a profitable newspaper was shut down in England.

Well, back to the Enquirer historical comparison.The most interesting part of the whole scandal and why it was so sad where two facts:

  • The Enquirer denounced and apologized the original story published. 
  • The story was damning against Chiquita. The story was a solid story, but due to the need to settle the case, the Enquirer had to run away from the series of articles, getting Chiquita off the hook, actually spinning the company as the victim of the situation.

It goes to show how much the public doesn't bother to pay attention to the facts, just the spin. Marketing works to well. It is a sad reality of humanity. We are suckers for spin.

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