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. . . The cover of a “special 24-page section” the Rupert Murdoch-owned Brooklyn Paper issued today to fawn appreciatively over the Ratner/Prokhorov “Barclays” basketball arena feints at mention of, and almost seems to refer to, the LIBOR interest rate-fixing scandal for which the Barclays Bank name is a virtual synonym.- And then it actually doesn’t- Just the reverse in fact.
The plastered headline “Banking on Barclays” punningly/cunningly (?) evokes the presumed reliability of the banking practices behind the “Barclays” name. It does that notwithstanding that most people who actually read real news should think of LIBOR instead.
But, in truth, the Brooklyn Paper is probably not thinking in this vein: The Brooklyn Paper has never devoted one jot of ink, or even a few electrons of its web edition articles, to spelling out the acronym LIBOR and that includes the nine new feature articles inside the “special section” all of which mention “Barclays” repeatedly. . .
. . One of them is appallingly titled: “The People’s Arena!”
That pretty much leaves it so that the headline of the Brooklyn Paper cover (it was wrapped around the entire “news” of this paper this week) was pretty much intended to elicit, with absolutely no tongue in cheek, exactly the impression Barclays bank would like to instill into public folklore: That it’s a bank with reliable, sound and solid banking practices. Pshaw!
Of course the Brooklyn Paper has less of a dilemma in this regard than the New York Times, which actually does report about the LIBOR scandal as a major story while at the same time running similar PR stenography for the developer/subsidy collector. The Times then has to figure out just how often and when to mention that, given the scandal, public promotion of “Barclays” is an incongruous embarrassment. So far: Three such mentions in the Times to the Murdoch Brooklyn Paper's zero.
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