Los Angeles Times Silent on Damaging News for Democrats - Again

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, a Democrat from West Virginia, resigned on Friday from the House ethics committee "amid accusations that he used his congressional position to funnel money to his own home-state foundations, possibly enriching himself in the process," according to the Washington Post and other news outlets. One place you won't read about this resignation, however, is in today's Los Angeles Times (Saturday, April 22, 2006). (A puny 291-word story about the charges appeared back on April 9.)

This continues a repeated practice at the Times of either delaying or simply ignoring news stories that are unflattering to Democrats. NewsBusters has already cataloged a number of instances of this in 2006:

• NY Times, LA Times Skip Charges for Illegal Democrat Raid on Steele's Personal Info (March 18, 2006) ...

• LA Times Silent On Al Gore's "Terrible Abuses" Remarks (Feb. 15, 2006) ...

• Los Angeles Times Silent on Hillary's "Plantation" Remark (Jan. 17, 2006) ... (finally (Jan. 19, 2006)) ...

• LA Times Has No Room For Fine of Hillary's False Campaign Reports (Jan. 6, 2006) ...

Less than a month ago, when an unrenowned conservative blogger named Ben Domenech was found to have committed plagiarism, the Times felt that this episode was worthy of two stories on the same day (here (section A) and here (Tim Rutten's "media" column). (And, needless to say, when charges of plagiarism against Al Franken were reported, the Times ignored this. The cited examples did not rise to the same degree of Domenech; but why the double standard? (Thanks, Brian Maloney).)

Hey, Jamie Gold. Are you reading this?