L.A. Times Barely Mentions Reid Ethics Issue
With an election approaching, the L.A. Times appears to be covering for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid — which is disappointing, because the paper has done a good job covering him in the past.
By now, everyone except L.A. Times readers knows that Reid may have violated Senate ethics rules. Reid failed to report a land transfer to a partnership controlled by Reid and a controversial lobbyist “whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations,” according to the Associated Press. Reid’s company later sold the land at a $700,000 profit, but Reid never reported the initial transfer or his ties to the lobbyist.
All of this occurs against a backdrop of Reid doing favors for Nevada land developers, at least one of whom has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Reid, and has advanced the careers of two of his sons.
The L.A. Times has done good work reporting Reid’s history of doing favors for land developers. But Reid’s latest potential ethical lapse — which has been reported by virtually every news organization out there — has been all but ignored by the L.A. Times.
Several news organizations consider it news that Reid may have violated Senate ethics rules with respect to the reporting of the land transfer. The revelation of Reid’s incomplete accounting has been reported in the Washington Post here and here, and in the New York Times here. The Chicago Tribune has also done an article on the issue.
Moreover, many news outlets have criticized Reid for his incomplete reporting. The Philadelphia Inquirer has called on Reid to resign if he can’t provide a better explanation than he has to date. Reid’s hometown paper says today that Reid is “ankle deep in the manure pit.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has called for a full ethics committee investigation of the matter, saying: “Reid’s ethics meter only seems to work when it’s too late.” The Washington Post has also been critical, saying that the AP story
doesn’t cast the senator in an attractive light. Neither does his response to the AP story, which indicates a casual disregard for the importance of accurate reporting of lawmakers’ financial affairs.
Yet, despite all of this coverage, the Reid ethics issue has not been the subject of a story in the L.A. Times. Indeed, it has barely been whispered about in the paper’s pages — as part of a defensive statement by a GOP defender, buried in an article about work that conservative organizations have done for Jack Abramoff.
Details in the extended entry.
I did a search for “Reid” in the L.A. Times‘s search engine, and looked for every mention of the word in articles dating back to Wednesday, October 12, when the Associated Press article broke the news of Reid’s potential ethics violations. I confirmed the results with a Lexis/Nexis “A La Carte” search.
Going back to October 12, the search reveals the following articles with the word “Reid”: articles mentioning Oklahoma State quarterback Bobby Reid (here and here), articles by Times staffer Jason Reid (here, here, here, and here), a story mentioning basketball player J.R. Reid, a letter to the editor from reader Alan Reid, and a business article mentioning law firm Thelen, Reid, and Priest.
The only article I have found mentioning Harry Reid’s ethics issue is here. It is an article about Jack Abramoff and his ties to the GOP, playing off a report by congressional Democrats that claims several conservative organizations have risked their tax-exempt status by helping Abramoff. In the article’s ninth paragraph, a spokesman for one of the conservative organizations defensively raises the Reid allegations:
A spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform, John Kartch, dismissed the Senate Democrats’ report as “political nonsense.” He said Norquist had done nothing improper and charged that the report was distributed deliberately just before the midterm election and the day after news stories appeared questioning financial transactions involving Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.
I find it highly amusing that the article says “news stories appeared questioning financial transactions involving Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid” — because they didn’t appear in the L.A. Times.
Here’s the thing: it’s not like the L.A. Times is incapable of reporting on Reid and his shady doings. It most assuredly is. Just, apparently, not right before an election.
Back in August, albeit in the business section, the Times had a long article about Reid’s interventions on behalf of a developer with a huge land development project northeast of Las Vegas. Reid’s help was critical to the project. Reid inserted provisions in legislation that removed federal obstacles to the project, and tried (and failed) to obtain over ten million dollars’ worth of benefits for the developer for free. Reid’s son, working on behalf of the developer, successfully lobbied the EPA to remove environmental objections to the project, after Reid pressured the EPA.
Meanwhile, the developer gave Reid “tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions” and “helped advance the legal careers of two of Reid’s four sons.”
In 2003, the same reporters ran this story, which details Reid’s legislation to accomplish switcheroos of public and private lands, coincidentally benefitting clients of lobbyists in Reid’s family. The various connections are set forth here. (Via Flopping Aces, which has much more, including audio of Reid hanging up on an AP reporter regarding the latest story. Also, Captain Ed discusses the 2003 L.A. Times story here.)
So why the silence at the L.A. Times, with its plethora of front-page articles on the Foley scandal? I don’t know, but the Albany Democrat-Herald had an amusing explanation yesterday for its own decision to all but ignore the Reid story in favor of the Foley story. The explanation is so comical, it could have come from the Onion. It boils down to this: the Foley is about gay sex, the editors said, whereas the Reid story was simply about a Senator making hundreds of thousands on a land deal. Bo-ring!
In the Foley matter, the substance of the story is sex, albeit gay sex. It is straightforward, so to speak — black and white, simple to understand.
The paper made sure to explain that part of the relevance of the story was that Foley “belongs to a party that has made ‘family values’ one of its mottos.”
Compared to that, the Reid story is dry as dust.
It involves a land deal in Las Vegas, a deal in which the Democratic senator from Nevada cleared more than a million dollars in profit.
Well, actually $700,000 — but to know that detail, you have to have actually, you know, followed the story. And that’s hard, because — yawn! — the story is not only “dry as dust,” but it’s just so long! Far too long, in fact, to fit in the paper:
The Associated Press investigated the transaction and this week sent along a story. It was something like 70 inches long, and there was no way we could have fit it in the paper. We did use a short version at the top of B5 on Thursday. It summarized the situation in the briefest of possible ways.
Too long and too boring. Not enough gay sex.
See? It has nothing to do with politics!
Is similar thinking behind the L.A. Times‘s decision to bury the story? I doubt it, but you never know.
Now, maybe Reid’s issues aren’t really that big a deal after all. Frank James at the Chicago Tribune says that Reid is getting a raw deal, and that the WaPo got basic facts about Reid’s transaction wrong. And Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker concurs.
But in light of Reid’s history of doing favors for land developers, the story certainly merits more than a whisper in a story about Jack Abramoff. Instead, we get all Foley, all the time. And the paper has room today for another nice long article about Jack Abramoff. Yet the editors can’t find space for a potential ethics breach by the Senate Minority Leader?
And the editors wonder why so many readers think they are hopelessly biased.
P.S. I am hopeful that the lapse in reporting Reid’s ethics issue is simply because the paper is working on a meatier story. I say that without irony. I am sending an e-mail to the reporters who have done such good work on Reid in the past, to ask them about it. I’ll let you know if I hear anything — though if they are working on a blockbuster story, I doubt they are going to tell me.
UPDATE: Captain Ed details an interesting web of coincidences here. There’s plenty of fodder there for an enterprising reporter or two.
Pattrico, unfortunatly the LA Times, the NYT and Washington Post cannot find any wrongdoings by Democrats. They put no investigative reporters on Reid because of the D next to his name. The LAT is the biggest brown-noser of the current Mayor and Hillary Clinton, why would they ever investigate a Democrat?
jsf (71415b) — 10/15/2006 @ 12:20 pmI don’t quite agree with jsf that the LAT would cover for Democrats; after all, as Patterico mentions, they have covered some of his questionable ties to developers in teh past. But I think that Patterico is right on the money when he posits that the LAT will keep quiet until after the elections. It seems pretty clear that they have decided that GOP corruption is the theme for the next four weeks. They can look into the allegations against Reid starting November 8.
In a similar vein, isn’t it highly ironic that Gerry Studds picked this weekend to die? I’ll bet lefties in the media hated having to run the obituaries mentioning that a Democrat was unapologetic in having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page and was still reelected by his liberal constitutents, right in the middle of the Foley scandal.
JVW (71e5a8) — 10/15/2006 @ 12:56 pmRemmeber this is the Smell A Times the most far left news paper on the west coast besides the San Francisco Chronicle and Examener as well as the Sacramento Bee its simply the west coasts issue of the New York Pravda
krazy kagu (fbcc60) — 10/15/2006 @ 2:31 pmCQ: A Mild Rebuke From The Home Town Paper …
Harry Reid’s financial shenanigans have caused a bigger stumble than he first thought. After hanging up on an AP reporter who asked about the undisclosed transaction that hid his partnership with a controversial Las Vegas attorney, Reid has sounded a…
Bill's Bites (72c8fd) — 10/15/2006 @ 3:54 pmThe fact that the Times has extesively reported on Reid’s conflicts of interest before may explain why they aren’t reporting this particular non-story.
Once you know the particulars of Reid’s transaction and alleged omission that everyone’s quacking about , you can’t write a story about the alleged omission with a straight face — unless you’re writing a story about the fact that there is no story.
That’s not to say that his advocacy of the various regulation repeals that made him lots of money doesn’t stink to high heaven of conflict of interest — it does. But the particular hook making the story timely now, by claiming he didn’t disclose something, is a joke, and a non-issue.
Phil (88ab5b) — 10/15/2006 @ 5:57 pmWhat seems self-evident to you, Phil, is not self-evident to the ethics committee or many experts.
Maybe you could explain your thinking rather than simply declaring that this is obviously a non-issue.
Patterico (de0616) — 10/15/2006 @ 6:04 pm[…] And by the way, I did pick up on today’s LA Times not covering the Harry Reid land deals, even though they had lots of corruption coverage (GOP of course). Wonder if that was on purpose, or just a bit of oversight? Patterico has the answer. Now, maybe Reid’s issues aren’t really that big a deal after all. Frank James at the Chicago Tribune says that Reid is getting a raw deal, and that the WaPo got basic facts about Reid’s transaction wrong. And Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker concurs. […]
“Okie” on the Lam » Okielaunch Given Without Regrets (e2cef7) — 10/15/2006 @ 7:17 pmYeah, a Google search for “Reid” on the LA Times would be more likely to turn up a story about Tara and her botched boob job than anything about Harry’s transgressions.
Ashley Squishy (ee9fe2) — 10/15/2006 @ 8:30 pm[…] Well, I don’t think I’ve heard about this in our paper, but then I havn’t been reading the dead trees version very often lately. By now, everyone except L.A. Times readers knows that Reid may have violated Senate ethics rules. Reid failed to report a land transfer to a partnership controlled by Reid and a controversial lobbyist “whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations,” according to the Associated Press. Reid’s company later sold the land at a $700,000 profit, but Reid never reported the initial transfer or his ties to the lobbyist. […]
LA Times now Published in NZ « Something should go here, maybe later. (07f25e) — 10/15/2006 @ 9:51 pmPatterico, I’m referring to the facts as plainly laid out in Frank James’ article in the Tribune. The transaction wasn’t worth reporting; had they reported it, no one would have noticed; and nothing was gained by not reporting it.
As I said, Reid’s conflicts of interest related to the increase in value on the land are disturbing, but they’ve been reported on already by the Times. This “failure to report” isn’t a failure to report anything.
Phil (88ab5b) — 10/16/2006 @ 7:06 amRead Ed Morrissey’s article in the NY Post: Reid’s Smelly Windfall, Back $cratching with Developers.
“The L.A. Times revealed the Reid family’s extensive connections with Clark County developers in June 2003, as well as Reid’s extensive legislative interest in the land, but the Brown-Reid investment had not yet come to light – thanks to Reid’s failure to disclose.
Had the investment been known, voters could have made the connection. (Prior to Reid’s last election.)The Senate Ethics Committee might have taken an interest as well – except that Harry Reid himself sat as the top Democrat on that panel.”
Black Jack (211e83) — 10/16/2006 @ 10:25 am“but the Brown-Reid investment had not yet come to light – thanks to Reid’s failure to disclose.”
That’s the part I see no evidence of. Reid’s disclosure of the 2001 transaction wouldn’t have mentioned Brown.
There is just one thing Reid didn’t disclose in 2001 that he could have disclosed. That is the addition of the LLC layer to his ownership of the land. But here’s what the disclosure would have looked like:
Created Patrick Lane Corp, LLC. Contributed $400,000 worth of land to LLC, in exchange for stock in the LLC that is valued at $400,000 worth of land.
That’s the disclosure Reid could have made. What is the net result? Well, both before and after the disclosure, readers know that Reid owns $400,000 worth of land.
What the reader does NOT know from the disclosure is that Brown also owned part of the land, first directly, and then through the LLC. Reid would never have had to do that, because the disclosure rules don’t require anyone to disclose co-owners of corporations OR co-owners of property.
Now, there was one sense in which the connection between Reid, Brown and the property was somewhat obscured by the transaction, but only in the sense that anyone who owns property through an LLC is distanced from the property. Prior to the creation of the LLC, Brown and Reid’s names were on a deed in the recorder’s office. After the creation of the LLC, the LLC’s name was on the deed at the recorder’s office, and Brown and Reid’s names were on the membership documents of the LLC filed with the Nevada secretary of state.
But in neither case would Brown’s name ever come up on the disclosure statements. So the assertion that “the Brown-Reid investment had not yet come to light – thanks to Reid’s failure to disclose” is baloney.
Phil (88ab5b) — 10/16/2006 @ 2:11 pmWell, Phil, if you’re so sure it’s all baloney why don’t you let those newspapers listed above know they’ve got it all wrong.
One is calling for Reid’s resignation, another wants an ethics investigation, and Reid’s home town paper says he’s “ankle deep in the manure pit.” They must see something there, even if you don’t.
Black Jack (211e83) — 10/17/2006 @ 10:37 amReid sat on the Ethics Committee and his dealings get overlooked. I’m starting to believe that Reid wants to lead the next “culture of corruption.”
Chris (5e5677) — 10/18/2006 @ 12:23 pmhttp://www.gopsenators.com/video/?ID=06489111-7017-4352-B150-513B27359DA0