The "Liberal" Media

Dave Lindorff has a great piece up over at Buzzflash where he asks why Dennis Kucinich has disappeared from the paper of record even though he's clearly still in the race, and beating Biden and Richardson in some polls. Lindorff states that

Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has been "disappeared." Not in the sense of victims of America's so-called War on Terror. He hasn't been carted off in an orange jumpsuit to some black site in Kazakhstan. But he has been "disappeared" by the reporters and editors of The New York Times.

He notes that

In an article by Jeff Zeleny and Mark Santora on Sunday headlined "Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years," the Times reports that Democratic candidates, with only candidate Bill Richardson "standing apart," are saying that troops will have to stay in Iraq and the area around Iraq for a long time.

But wait. Kucinich, who in many polls does as well as or better than Biden and Richardson (in a new straw poll of Democratic activists in California, he ranked right behind Edwards and Obama, and ahead of Clinton and the rest of the crowd), not only wants the U.S. out of Iraq; but also he has submitted an actual bill in Congress (HR 1234) calling for a removal of all U.S. troops within three months' time, and barring the expenditure of any funds on future military activity in the region, except for the purpose of orderly withdrawal.

So why was Kucinich left out of the Times article on Democratic candidates' positions on the Iraq War? The answer seems clear. The Times has decided that Kucinich isn't a candidate. He doesn't exist. He has been disappeared.

But to me, the kicker is actually the following paragraph, which notes that Kucinich's candidacy is not the only think missing from the New York Times.

The same is true on the issue of impeachment. The Times has only twice mentioned the bill, H Res 333, for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, which Kucinich filed on April 24. The first mention was a three-sentence "National Brief" item that ran the day Kucinich filed the measure, half of which was taken up with a Cheney spokeswoman's mocking response; the only other was a phrase tucked within a parenthetical comment in a April 27 article reporting on a lackluster candidate's debate.

Americans who get their news from the Times -- and that would include millions who read or watch news that itself is produced by organizations whose editors' opinions are shaped by the Times -- would not know that over the course of the last three and a half months, some 20 members of Congress, including six members of the crucial 23-member House Judiciary Committee, have signed on to Kucinich's Cheney impeachment bill. That is roughly 10 percent of the House Democratic caucus.

I am ever grateful for the existence of the blogs at a time when the paper vilified by the right-wing as "liberal" can't be bothered to report the news.