Social media, publicity whirl gave traction to Cosby scandal

Even the chief instigator himself — with 319,000 Twitter followers — couldn't anticipate the enormous impact of his rant.

"Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean that really got out of hand fast," comedian Hannibal Buress tweeted on Oct. 21, five days after he performed a stand-up set in Philadelphia that included mentioning the rape allegations against comedian Bill Cosby juxtaposed with Cosby's penchant for lecturing African Americans.

Shot-from-back-rows video footage of Buress' performance was posted on the website of Philadelphia magazine — which in 2006 had published a story on Cosby's alleged sexual abuse — the day after his Oct. 16 performance. Taking cues from the website, BuzzFeedpublished its own story about the show. And Twitter and other social media venues did the rest, paving the path toward the implosion of Cosby's reputation and career.

Allegations that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted women have been around for years. Some intrepid reporters have tried to hold Cosby accountable for his alleged actions. But for a multitude of complex and uncomfortable reasons — the absence of criminal charges; the collective reluctance to believe that evil lurked in America's favorite TV dad; aggressive pushback by the Cosby forces; reporters too busy to chew on stories that would require long sit-downs with lawyers — the ugly allegations remained on the periphery of public discussions about Cosby.

Until now.

Women who have been allegedly assaulted by Cosby continue to come forward with their stories, almost every day, it seems. The number of women accusing the comedian of sexual misconduct is nearing 20. (Cosby, who has never been charged criminally, has denied the allegations.)

So what made Cosby's alleged bad behavior a megastory this time around? Not just Twitter. Social media was in its full swing when Gawker's Tom Scocca wrote extensively in February about Cosby's alleged abuse, but that story didn't gain nearly the traction Buress' skit did.

Perhaps it was the visceral effect of a young black comedian publicly shaming the hypocrisy of his community's icon — a skit too strident and that rang too true to remain buried in amphitheaters. The grainy footage of Buress was enough to prompt a few social media upstarts to spin the story forward. BuzzFeed and The Young Turks, a YouTube channel with more than 1.8 million subscribers, were among the first to jump.

"I've been doing that bit off and on for six months," Buress told Howard Stern on Stern's radio show. "It's very weird. A lot of people are writing me. I didn't expect that. That wasn't my intention to make it part of a big discussion. I said it and I gotta stand on it."

Other factors include Cosby's ill-timed media tour earlier this month to hawk his latest projects and the glowing reviews of a Cosby biography released in September that pointedly ignored the allegations.

Cosby also unwittingly helped fan the scandal with his persistent silence on the recent flurry of new allegations. "I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn't have to answer to innuendos," he told Florida Today last week. "People should fact-check. People shouldn't have to go through that and shouldn't answer to innuendos."

The difference between 2006, when Philadelphia magazine did its story, and now "is that someone can see this video and spread it on Twitter," says Tom McGrath, the magazine's editor. "It was such a different age. The print story goes out in the world, and often you didn't know how you did."

"The big reported piece was a number of years ago," he adds. "We took a big swing and it made a little noise back then. But not like now."

That Cosby pushed himself forward so aggressively to promote his projects — a new series on NBC and a comedy special on Netflix (both subsequently canceled), the new biography and his art collection displayed at the Smithsonian Institution — was part of his undoing, says Jack Shafer, media columnist for Reuters.

"We're in the era of Cosby blitz," he says. "The spotlight in the public eye got brighter."

Cosby also did himself no favor with his odd social media campaign in mid-November that called on fans to generate memes about the comedian.

What followed was a tragicomedy of thousands of memes, carrying the hashtag, #CosbyMeme, about the rape and sexual assault allegations. The ill-fated CosbyMeme campaign and the subsequent flood of stories emboldened more women to come forward about their encounters with Cosby.

"Thanks to technology, the past is much more discoverable in much more economic fashion than before," Shafer says. "Twenty years ago, you needed LexisNexis to find out what happened. With a Web browser, a kid can out-report an investigative reporter from 1992."

The browser-equipped consumer also can set the record straight on hagiographic accounts. Cosby's new biography, written by former Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker, makes no mention of rape allegations.

In an interview with NPR in early November, Cosby spoke about his hope that the 62 African-American art pieces that he lent the Smithsonian would stir appreciation for the commonality of human experience. As the radio interview wound to a close, Cosby was asked by Scott Simon about the allegations. The comedian responded with multiple shakes of the head, a silence that spoke to his befuddlement that the news media — and the situation — were no longer under his control.

"Celebrities," Shafer says, "live on this doubled-edged sword."