In a previous post I highlighted the disturbing abuse scandal that is currently rocking the Chicago public school system. The former CEO of the Chicago public schools is Arne Duncan, who is now Secretary of Education. It’s my belief (along with that of virtually every other conservative) that because Duncan is now a Disciple of the One, he will not be held accountable.
I concluded, “Once again, the silence from the national news media and liberal children’s advocacy groups is absolutely deafening.”
One of our regular trolls, mantis, responded:
The investigation was just reported yesterday, and has so far been picked up by every network and major newspaper in Chicago, and you’re complaining about lack of coverage?
I’m sure you’ll completely ignore the increased coverage in coming days, as well as the involvement of those “liberal” childrens advocacy groups, as it will show how idiotic your complaint is.
You really are this stupid, aren’t you? It can’t possibly be an act.
The big story about the abuse scandal (from CBS 2 in Chicago) is datelined Monday Feb. 9. If mantis is right, then all of the major news networks should have produced their own stories about the scandal by Wednesday. 48+ hours is plenty of time, right?
I looked around the interwebz Wednesday evening to see what I could find. My first stop was Google. I needed to make sure that I had a valid query string for search engines. I typed in “chicago school abuse.” Let’s see what I came up with:
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As you can see (click on the image to enlarge it), the first four search results are about the current abuse scandal in the Chicago public schools. I think the query string is good, so on to MSNBC.
Nothing. Bupkus. Even scrolling through the search results, I can’t find anything about the Chicago public school abuse scandal. Maybe CBS News will be better.
“No results were found for: ‘chicago school abuse’.” ABC News?
No results found. How about CNN?
Again nothing. CNN uses a modified Google search. You’ll note the handy “Web Results” column on the right-hand side which, once again, lists five stories from Chicago news outlets and blogs about the public school abuse scandal. But nothing from CNN’s own website.
For the record, a search of the Fox News website using the same query string also failed to produce anything. There was nothing at the New York Times or Washington Post websites either.
Well, mantis?
You see, we talk about media bias and double standards because it is real. We’ve just gone through eight years of “search and destroy” media coverage of the White House. Had this or a similar incident happened to a Bush appointee, it certainly would have been front-page news in every major newspaper and the lead story on every network news broadcast by now. Maybe I should cut mantis some slack. After all, he might be ignorant enough to still believe that the press treats everyone fairly, and to expect things that would have merited prime coverage just a few months ago to still be focal points of news reporting today.
Sorry to disappoint you, mantis, but times have changed. Unless something extraordinary happens, there will be no “Arne-gate” or “Heckuva Job, Arne” headlines. The media is now completely in the tank for Obama. The spittle rags have been replaced with drool buckets. Even the prize-winning political cartoonists can’t make fun of him. I don’t know what else I can say. If there is an uptick in news coverage about this story, or some update-worthy events occur, I’ll be glad to blog about them — but I won’t be holding my breath waiting.
Now you know. I tried to break the news as gently as I could.
