Tomorrow the Washington Post, on its front page, reports the news that Alcee Hastings will not be chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. For a story about Nancy Pelosi’s decision, the Post piece gets into a number of details about the Hastings case itself. Why? One reason might be that, during the last few months when concerns about Hastings’ impeachment and conviction were being raised, the Post never reported the basic facts of the case. A Nexis search for Hastings’ name and that of William Borders, Hastings’ co-conspirator in soliciting bribes, reveals exactly one recent story — a November 1 column by the Post’s Ruth Marcus, who had covered the Hastings story years ago. As Congress buzzed, and Pelosi deliberated, the Post never bothered to tell its readers what the controversy was about.
By the way, if you do the same search for the New York Times, you’ll find the same thing — just without the Ruth Marcus column. Which means that perhaps the most interesting so-far-unnoticed aspect of the story is that so much political pressure built up on Capitol Hill while the nation’s two leading newspapers were looking the other way.