The Cain Train

To fire back at Herman Cain’s sexual harassment allegation, he is targeting journalists by passing out a code of ethics with guidelines on how to report stories. Cain’s campaign spokesman, J.D. Gordon emailed parts of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics. What he sent focused limiting the use of anonymous sources and to evaluate their motives before using the source.  According to reports from Fox News, the code is full of reminders such as not using arrogance in reporting and “treating subjects of stories as reporters would like to be treated and exposing unethical behavior by fellow reporters.” I think reporters should follow some sort of code of ethics but just as I think any person in any field should. The way the code phrases it and the fact that Cain brought it up seems a little childish. The first thing I thought of when reading them was the saying you tell children, do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Even with the allegations towards Cain, he is still hopeful and believes his supporters will continue to support him. On Saturday Cain asked donors to contribute toward his goal of raising $999,000, which goes perfectly with his 9-9-9 plan, by Thursday so he can compete in the Iowa caucus scheduled in January. In his email sent out he wrote, "Every time someone makes a donation to my campaign it shows the media and my opponents that the American people are fed up with the politics of personal destruction and they are demanding real change in Washington." Even with all the momentum Cain’s campaign may still have the allegation are definitely affecting him in the race. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, Cain has lost 9 points in his favorability rating with Republicans. Not too long age he was at 66 percent in the poll and now he has dropped to 57 percent. Among all registered voters he dropped 5 percentage points to 32 percent from 37 percent. On the good side for Cain he is still ahead of Obama in terms of favorability rankings. In another survey (Washington Post-ABC News survey) taken after the sexual harassment allegations came out, it showed Cain and Mitt Romney running pretty much even with “seven in ten Republicans saying the reports don’t matter when it comes to picking a candidate.”

Luckily for Cain it seems like most of his opponents think the accusations against Cain are irrelevant for the race, although it does create a big distraction to the important topics. I think the media blew this way out of proportion but I suppose that is what the media does. They dig around till they find something juicy enough to sell and roll with. At least for Cain his name is still in the news. However, on Saturday Cain said he would not answer any more questions about the allegations while he cut off a journalist asking him a question about it and he Cain then said “please send him the journalistic code of ethics.” I’m not so sure this code of ethics will work for Cain but it will be interesting to see in the next week or so if this story dies down or get more heighted.  Cain told reporters “when people get on the Cain train, they don’t get off.” We will have to wait and see if he is right about the Cain train.