Getting your news from party organs

Bryan Preston describes the media as "Democrat operatives with by-lines." Heexcerpts heavily from a column by Glenn Reynoldsabout California State Senator Leland Lee:

California State senator (and, until last week, candidate for secretary of state) Leland Yee was well-known as an anti-gun activist. Then, last week, he was indicted for, yes, conspiring to smuggle guns and rocket launchers between mobsters and terrorists in exchange for massive bribes.

This all sounds like news. You've got charges of huge bribes, rampant hypocrisy, illegal weapons and even a connection with foreign terrorists — and from a leading politician in an important state.

But — and here's the part Hollywood would miss — outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Times buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, "California: State Senator Accused of Corruption." This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.

When Republicans do things that embarrass their party, the national media are happy to take note, even if they're mere state senators. But when Democrats like Yee get busted for actual felonies, and pretty dramatic ones at that, the press suddenly isn't interested.

We've seen this before, of course: Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff dismissed the horrific Kermit Gosnell trial as a "local crime story", even as the press was going crazy covering another equally local crime story, the George Zimmerman trial. Likewise, another state senator, Texas' Wendy Davis, got national attention when she filibustered an abortion bill, a story that fit conveniently with the "war on women" theme used by Democrats.

It's almost as if "what's news" is just a synonym for "what advances the narrative chosen by the Democratic Party." The question that "news" operations like CNN may want to ask is, how many people are really interested in getting their news from party organs.