WHEN IS A SCANDAL NOT A SCANDAL? WHEN THERE’S A DEMOCRAT INVOLVED

 

INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY

When Is A Scandal Not A Scandal? When There’s A Democrat Involved

September 7, 2017
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: 

Menendez in on trial for allegedly having sold his office in exchange for luxury vacations, private flights, and piles of campaign cash. In his opening remarks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Koski said “this case is about a corrupt politician who sold his Senate office for a life of luxury he couldn’t afford and a greedy doctor who put that senator on his payroll. … The defendants didn’t just trade money for power, they also tried to cover it up.”

It’s the first time in 36 years that a sitting U.S. senator has been on trial for bribery, which you’d think would make it front page news.

And the stakes of the trial’s outcome are big, too. Should Menendez be found guilty and forced to give up his Senate seat, New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie would almost certainly replace him with a Republican, giving the GOP a bigger margin in the Senate. That could, among other things, improve the odds of getting things like ObamaCare repealed and tax reform enacted.

Corruption: A sitting U.S. Senator is currently on trial for bribery, and if he’s found guilty it could have major political ramifications. Haven’t heard about this case? That’s because the Senator in question is a Democrat.

A CNN story this week about the opening of the trial against New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez noted that “Democrats are eager to avoid the subject of Menendez’s bribery trial.”

That headline would have been just as accurate if it said “Reporters” instead of “Democrats.”

Menendez in on trial for allegedly having sold his office in exchange for luxury vacations, private flights, and piles of campaign cash. In his opening remarks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Koski said “this case is about a corrupt politician who sold his Senate office for a life of luxury he couldn’t afford and a greedy doctor who put that senator on his payroll. … The defendants didn’t just trade money for power, they also tried to cover it up.”

It’s the first time in 36 years that a sitting U.S. senator has been on trial for bribery, which you’d think would make it front page news.

And the stakes of the trial’s outcome are big, too. Should Menendez be found guilty and forced to give up his Senate seat, New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie would almost certainly replace him with a Republican, giving the GOP a bigger margin in the Senate. That could, among other things, improve the odds of getting things like ObamaCare repealed and tax reform enacted.

But the New York Times, for which this case also is a local story, has published a total of six articles about the case this year.  The day the trial opened, the Time’s buried its story on page A20 in the local news section.

Nor did the Washington Post, where politics is its singular obsession, run the story about the first day of the trail on the front page.


Even when the press has covered the Menendez case, it has tended to downplay his party affiliation. The New York Times’ 1,300-word curtain raiser about the trial (which also did not run on the front page) failed to mention even once that Menendez is a Democrat.

When confronted with this glaring omission, reporter Nick Corasaniti brushed it off as “just an oversight on my part after drafts.”

Right.

Even when the Times updated the story online, it didn’t mention that Menendez is a Democrat until the fourth paragraph.

Then there’s the version of an AP story that ran on the NBC News website, which identified Menendez as “R-N.J.” in the first paragraph. Several hours later, NBC corrected its mistake, noting that “an earlier version of this article misstated the party affiliation of Menendez. He is a Democrat, not a Republican.”

Sloppiness? Bias? You decide. But try to imagine these reporters making such Journalism 101 mistakes if the case had involved a Republican. Does anyone outside of the liberal media bubble really think that a reporter would incorrectly identify a Republican as a Democrat when reporting on a major scandal? Or fail to mention the person’s party affiliation at all?

The fact is that reporters and editors are so determined to portray Republicans as contemptible and corrupt that they can’t or won’t see scandals that involve their beloved Democrats.

And, believe it or not, there are plenty such scandals on the Democrat’s side of the aisle. Under Obama, there was Fast and Furious, the IRS’s war on conservative groups, the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play scandal. There’s the House IT scandal involving former DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. There’s an FBI investigation pay-to-play scandal involving two Democratic Pennsylvania mayors. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Chaka Fattah was recently convicted on corruption charges and former Florida Rep. Corrine Brown on charges relating to a fraudulent charity. Calif. Rep. Maxine Waters is on the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s “most corrupt” list. On and on it goes.

In each case, the mainstream press either ignored the scandal, offered little more than perfunctory coverage, or dutifully tried to play it down or explain it away.

We have nothing against the press aggressively pursuing and exposing corruption and other scandals involving Republicans. That’s the role a free press should play. But the media’s one-sided accountability is a total disgrace.

Reporters love to say they “speak truth to power.” But they only ever seem to speak up when the “power” has an “R” after its name. Otherwise, they’re happy to be as silent as the grave.

 

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