Three Stories: Have You Heard Any of Them?

Below is my post for Balance of Power for Monday. I'm sure my fellow Bop'ers are already writing their responses:

Three huge stories broke last week. Here's a brief rundown on each one:

First, The Salem Broadcasting Network, home of such conservative talk show hosts as Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt, was accused of shifting funds from a Boys and Girls Club to its own coffers, to the amount of well over nine hundred thousand dollars. There are allegations that both Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh may also be involved in the incident. This shifting of funds apparently caused the bankruptcy and closure of the charitable facility. To date, there has been no apology from Salem, or any of its on air voices. Also, there is no evidence that the amount has been paid back. The scandal appears to be widening.

Second, Senator George Allen (R-VA), often mentioned for the Republican Presidential nomination, loaned $470,000 to a Union President with whom he was having an affair. Reports indicate that Senator Allen forgave the loan recently, while toying with the idea of running for Governor of his home state. The same Union has recently endorsed Allen for Governor. Both Allen and the female union President deny any connection between the forgiveness of the loan and the endorsement...

And finally, a significant report on voter fraud, intimidation and suppression in the 2004 election was released on August 2nd. The report, released by the bi-partisan American Center For Voting Rights, shows widespread intimidation of Kerry voters in the days before the election, including paid Republican operatives slashing the tires of Kerry's "Get out the Vote" vans the night befor the election in Milwaukee. Also reported was the fire bombing of a local Kerry Campaign headquarters in Philadelphia. The report details multiple convictions in many states of Republican operatives related specific voter intimidation charges. There is little evidence of the kind of widespread voter suppression and abuse charged by either the RNC Chairman at the time, or the current chairman however.

Why have you not heard of any of these stories, unless you read the much maligned alternative media? How could such scandals not be on the front pages of the New York Times each and every day? Why have there been no "special reports" hosted by Peter Jennings, Brian Williams, and whatever Dan Rather replacement is at CBS right now? Because each and every one of the scandals involve Democrats, not Republicans.

The radio network involved in the ongoing scandal is of course Air America, the left's answer to conservative talk radio. And the Senator involved is not George Allen, but Jon Corzine, the Democrat Senator from New Jersey. You may have seen them together last year on the Sunday morning talk shows. Both Senators Allen and Corzine ran their party's Senate re-election campaigns in 2004. And, the widespread voter fraud, intimidation and suppression was done by Democrats, not Republicans. Let me repeat that, since you won't hear it anywhere else. NOT REPUBLICANS. Or conservatives, to be more accurate.

If any of the above scandals involved the Conservatives I mentioned above, does anyone seriously question how much coverage it would have received? Had the report found Republicans engaging in organized voter fraud, wouldn't ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBC have wall to wall coverage of the horror? They don't, though. Because it isn't Republicans, but Democrats convicted. Over and over, across the country, Kerry supporters engaged in active voter suppression and intimindation of Bush supporters.

Who hasn't heard of Rush Limbaugh's drug problem? It was story number one for days. Yet the Air America story has yet to be mentioned by the MSM. Any question why?

If you need more evidence of Journalism's left leaning bias, go here. The page chronicles poll after poll showing the ongoing lack of balance in newsrooms across the country, and the increasingly out of touch journalistic community.

But bias occurs on both sides. Everyone knows that. I mean the conservatives have FoxNews, and The Washington Times, and talk radio, right?

Wrong! If you combine all the so-called "new media" sources together, they don't hold a candle to the coverage, or non-coverage, provided by the MSM. The reality remains that a vast majority of Americans get their news from the very MSM sources that are most biased while claiming to be objective.

Well, so what? Does it really matter? Oh yes, it matters alot. A free press is the only non-governmental industry specifically named in The Constitution. The Founding Fathers understood clearly that the only way for a people to remain free was to remain informed. Journalists are supposed to fulfill that promise. As you can see from the three examples above, they are failing miserably.

Aren't you really just whining about life being "unfair?" Whining? Nope. For years, conservatives have known the bias of the MSM, and the control they had over the national agenda. Conservatives were forced to the back of the Journalistic bus, brought out only as token talking heads when needed.

That control is threatened today, threatened by the very forum you are reading. Blogs, and their older companion Talk Radio, have begun to shift the agenda. Dan Rather and CBS found that out the hard way, trying to influence an election with forged documents. Jordan Eason and CNN found out the same thing when Mr. Eason tried to run from some foolish, anti-American remarks. And most recently, my very own Senator Dick (D-IL) found out that the agenda had changed when he compared American soldiers at Gitmo to Nazis and Stalin and Pol Pot.

Yet, the biased agenda, and the denial, by the MSM continues. But it no longer continues in the darkness. Thanks to the power of the blogosphere, The Media Research Center , and such books as Coloring the News, Bias, Arrogance, Weapons of Mass Distortion and Blog, the MSM can no longer get away with their bias unchallenged. And the denials of such MSM journalists like Eric Alterman can't sweep away the reams of documented evidence. In fact, such denials in the face of the truth of liberal bias only make "journalists" like Alterman look increasingly out of touch with the "fly-over" country that used to buy his paper.

Three stories. Thanks to the New Media, they can be kept hidden no longer.

Updates:
Here's an update on the Air America story since I wrote my post for Balance of Power.
The Corzine scandal, and the deafening silence of the MSM on the voter report continue.