This year’s Senate races are the Democrats’ to lose in the sense that
the GOP is doing nothing to earn them, hoping Obama’s political collapse
will have reverse coattail effects.
The “news” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC have largely avoided paying
attention to the bad political outlook for Democrats in the 2014. It is
amazing. What bigger political story is there this year? They even skip
their own polls revealing Obama’s approval ratings have sunk to the
point they almost mirror George W. Bush’s marks in 2006, when Democrats
took over both houses of Congress.
The
bad-news-is-no-news channels struck again with the scandal around
appointed Sen. John Walsh of Montana, named earlier this year to replace
longtime Sen. Max Baucus. On July 24, The New York Times published a
scoop above the fold on its front page accusing Walsh of plagiarizing
his final paper at the U.S. Army War College, where he obtained a
Master’s degree.
The Times reported Walsh “took most of a 2007 final paper…from other
sources without proper attribution. Mr. Walsh copies an entire page
nearly word for word from a Harvard paper, and each of his six
conclusions is copied from a document from the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace without attribution.” They added the Army War
College handbook clearly states that doing this is “academic fraud.”
This was The New York Times, not a paper the liberal media would
dismiss like The Washington Times. Network coverage? CBS gave it a
non-judgmental blip of 31 seconds that morning. ABC and NBC didn’t read
the paper that morning, apparently. Nor must they have political
departments. They filed nothing.
Walsh was one of the brighter hopes for Democrats in the red states,
where they hoped to use his Bronze Star and his War College degree to
sell him to voters who repeatedly re-elected Baucus. This news was
devastating for Democratic hopes to retain their majority.
But the self-imposed ignorance gets worse. Senator Walsh’s response was
disastrous. He initially told the Times he’d never plagiarized
anything, and then clumsily suggested that post-traumatic stress
disorder may have played a role in his fraud.
The Montana papers weren’t coy about all this, insisting Walsh needed
to drop his attempt to be elected this fall. The Billings Gazette
editorialized harshly: “Haunted by a serious lapse in academic honesty,
Walsh is finished as a U.S. Senate candidate.” The Missoulian insisted
that Montana Democrats were wasting precious time to replace Walsh “with
a more viable candidate.”
In response to the local hubbub, Walsh announced on August 7 he would
not run for a full term. Surely, now the networks would have to devote a
few minutes to this story, right? No. Except for the CBS morning blip,
they have remained staunchly silent throughout the whole fiasco.
If Sen. Walsh were an appointed Republican senator, this would be a
massive TV story. This is not debatable. We know because they often
furiously overreact when the GOP is involved. Just three examples in an
endless list: In 2011, these networks overflowed with coverage when
Politico claimed presidential candidate Herman Cain had sexually
harassed women. They offered 117 stories before they could even offer an
accuser that would put her name on the record.
Two years ago, they “flooded the zone” when Missouri Senate candidate
Todd Akin made unscientific claims about the female body’s reaction to
“legitimate rape.” They offered a massive 96 minutes (and 45 segments)
of coverage or this rape gaffe over the first three and a half days.
Back in January, these same networks offered 88 minutes of coverage in
two days to the claims that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s aides
imposed traffic jams in Bergen County.
These networks are not dedicated to offering fair-minded and detached
journalism to the voters. They are dedicated to churning out (or
blacking out) political scandals based solely on helping their
Democratic cronies.