On April 4, 2007, talk show host Don Imus, while chatting with his sidekicks on his morning radio program, referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team-which had lost a college championship game the previous evening-as "nappy-headed hos." This was not the first time that Imus and the regulars on his show-which was nationally syndicated by CBS Radio and simulcast on MSNBC-had ed racial and sexual innuendo into their early morning banter. "Imus in the Morning" had long been a show that alternated serious conversation with prominent politicians and journalists with crass locker-room humor and gibes directed at homosexuals, blacks, Jews, and other ethnic minorities, most of them figures in sports, entertainment, or politics. In the past, Imus had weathered occasional protests against his insulting brand of humor, but this time would be different. His remark about the Rutgers team was picked up by a liberal media watchdog group and posted, with an accompanying video clip, on its website and, later, on YouTube. Almost immediately, there was an outcry from black organizations and leaders, and calls for Imus to be fired. An apology by Imus did nothing to quiet critics, as other groups and individuals began to clamor for him to be taken off the air. Media coverage, spotty at first, expanded as protest grew more vocal. In a little over a week, the controversy came to a head. With advertisers bailing out and critics unappeased by apologies and a two-week suspension, NBC, and CBS abruptly canceled the long-running show. HKS Case Number 1920.0

On October 2, 2003, on the eve of a special election to choose a new Governor of California, the Los Angeles Times published a lengthy investigative article about allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of the leading candidate: movie star turned Republican gubernatorial hopeful Arnold Schwarzenegger. The result was surprising. As much as it made Schwarzenegger the subject of discussion, so too did it do the same for the Times itself. In part because it appeared within days of the election and, in part because of a history of criticism of the newspaper for what its critics alleged was a liberal political bias, the Times found itself having to defend publicly its decision to do what it understood to be a key responsibility of a major daily newspaper-scrutinizing the record of a politician. HKS Case Number 1790.0

The resignation of Mississippi Senator Trent Lott from his position as Majority Leader was an event unprecedented in the history of the US Senate. It occurred precipitously, in the wake of remarks he had made at an event where no one expected controversy-the 100th birthday party of the Senate's oldest member, South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. Lott's remarks, in which he praised Thurmond's 1948 run for the Presidency as the candidate of the segregationist Dixiecrat Party, only gradually sparked a firestorm, however. This case tells the story of how the controversy grew, with particular emphasis on the role of non-traditional media-specifically on the role of those political writers who distributed their views through "web logs". The case describes how the Lott story spread from the keyboards of such "bloggers" to the more mainstream print and television press-to the point at which public pressure culminated in Lott's resignation from the Senate leadership. This case allows for discussion of the evolution of the press, as new electronic media facilitated the efforts of a range of voices to reach a wider public, and of the life-cycle of what some have termed press feeding frenzies, wherein the fate of major public officials or policy issues seemingly follows a sort of dramatic script, as they take center stage in the reporting of the moment. The case can be used either by those with a special interest in the way in which public officials deal with the press, or by those with a special interest in the internal dynamics of the mass media. It can be used in conjunction with "Managing a Press Feeding Frenzy" (1135.0, 1135.1), "Breaking the Bad News: Divad" (841.0), and/or "Siege Mentality: ABC, the White House and the Iran Hostage Crisis " (823.0). HKS Case Number 1731.0.