Nation Of Change is selling the video, Hot Coffee, to raise money.
Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.
If you look at the comments on YouTube, you see most people are not convinced by the trailer that McDonald’s was wrong.
To form an enlightened opinion yourself, I provide you with a balanced presentation of Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants from WikiPedia.
After reading WikiPedia, you may or may not agree that this is another example of something I noted in a previous post – once the media gets a story wrong, they just won’t let go of it. The previous post to which I refer is Lukewarm US Support of Chinese Dissident – My Donkey.
The trailer doesn’t explain it, but the summary of the movie above does seem to hint that there is an explanation of what is the driving force behind all of the media telling you just one side of the story (and it is [almost] always the same side).
The lesson to be learned is that when you hear a news story that promotes only one side of a story, you need to be very skeptical. You have to wonder who is benefiting from this one sided approach, and why would the news outlet be so sloppy as to not report the other side? This is something that always comes to my mind when I hear or read news stories like this. It does not matter to me which one side is being promoted and which one side is left out. A one sided story is always suspect.
As for whether or not I practice what I preach on this blog, I refer you to the Introduction where I say:
This is my blog for commenting on politics.
I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.