On the front page of America’s papers of record today is the story of Norman Hsu, a bundler for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. On first read, it’s a heck of a story, tying together international mystery, financial scandal, and a mentally fragile man with an Election ’08 thread.
And yes, while Hsu did bring in a staggering $850,000 for Clinton’s campaign—along with smaller donations to other Democrats—no politician has been accused of acting on a quid-pro-quo. As scandals go, it’s fairly weak sauce.
But as a reader at the (recently CJR-profiled) Talking Points Memo points out, there’s another, far more newsworthy political corruption scandal unfolding at the same time—one you’d only know if you looked much deeper inside The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. And a little research proves the point.
In late May, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Ted Stevens, the Senate’s longest serving Republican, was being investigated after extensively remodeling his Alaska home—it seemed that Veco, a well-connected oil services company whose leaders have pled guilty to conspiracy and bribery, was involved in the work. While Stevens hasn’t yet been charged, a related court case has been unfolding, and exposing more information damning to Stevens.
What’s remarkable is that key moments in the two cases have three times arrived on the same day—and that on every one of those days, Hsu’s gotten more play and more ink.
For example, on September 15, Veco’s ex-CEO testified under oath that he’d supplied free labor, furniture, and materials for the renovation. The Post put that bombshell inside on page 3, and a day later The New York Times ran it on A-19. Meanwhile, Hsu—without a breaking news peg—flooded the front pages of both the Los Angeles and New York Times.
On Thursday, a Veco staffer told The AP that he and other employees had been paid by the company to do odd jobs at Stevens fundraisers. Of the three papers, only the Post reported that, on page 7. Meanwhile Hsu—who did little more that day than fly to California for his trial—was in all three papers.
And last night news broke that the FBI taped phone calls between Senator Stevens and Veco’s CEO. The New York Times didn’t mention this recording of a sitting senator at all. The Post and the Los Angeles Times put it on A-10 and A-13, respectively. Meanwhile, in California, Hsu’s indictment was unsealed—and it landed him on the front page of all three papers.




I see...
The "problem" in McLearyland now is supposedly that the media is paying too much attention to a huge, breaking Democratic fundraising scandal involving a convicted felon fugitive who gave gobs of money to Sen. Clinton's campaign (as well as a horde of other Dems), and not enough attention to Ted Stevens, who hasn't yet been charged with a damned thing...
Meanwhile, Bill Jefferson, a seasoned Democratic veteran of the House, ended up with 90 grand of FBI-numbered cash in his freezer (and also 16 federal felony indictments to boot), but a search of CJR's website turns up NOTHING about the story...
Not a damned word. Zilcho.
CJR's left-wing bias is very often this obvious. Some bunch of "professionals" these self-proclaimed "watchdogs" are!
Posted by padikiller
on Fri 21 Sep 2007 at 09:05 PM
One is a story effecting one senator from one small state, the other is a story affecting potentially dozens of individuals, and several presidential candidates. Know one knows the quid-pro-quo aspect of this, because few seem to be looking into it (surprise surprise). All we seem to get are cute snippets from the press offices of “I’m shocked” or “We didn’t know”. There seem to be many similarities between this and the 1996 Chinese Campaign finance scandal that caught up a president, vice president, cabinet members, and congressmen (try finding a story about that gem in CJR archives) In other words, this is a bigger story so dont be such a twat.
Posted by TDC
on Sun 23 Sep 2007 at 05:22 PM