The importance of Dean's statement on Schaivo

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was recently quoted as saying his party intended to use Terry Schaivo's death in election campaigns in 2006 and 2008. A number of bloggers have pointed out that the MSM had no interest in covering the unseemly statement, despite national coverage of a talking points memo on the same subject that was inaccurately alleged to have come from the GOP leadership in the Senate.

The failure to cover the story is not due to media bias. It is due to media partisanship. This example is noteworthy because it, like Jimmy Carter's treasonous request for the Soviets to provide an October Surprise and the wildly disparate treatment of Bush's and Kerry's military records, has a directly comparable story implicating Democrats. In such cases, the clear partisanship of the media cannot be spun with a straight face.

Most stories don't offer such direct comparisons. We can assert that coverage of Sandy Berger's crimes was much more subdued than would have been the case had he been a Republican. But the case lacks a direct parallel for comparison. When the parallel is available, the gross difference in media coverage needs to be emphasized.