Twin Cities News Has Broken

A few weeks back, Minnesota Republican House Representatives Tara Mack and Tim Kelly were ticketed for nuisance when a Dakota County Sheriff's Deputy spotted their vehicle in a regional park parking lot, approached it and, as he reported, caught the lawmakers "making out," with Rep. Mack's pants being listed as "unzipped" and "pulled down."  Both Mack and Kelly are married, but not to each other, and both are Representatives of the political party which insists it's the party of high moral fiber, Christian standards, and a wholesome way of life.  Both Mack and Kelly insisted the Sheriff Deputy was making up the story, with Kelly even going as far as suggesting it was the beginning of a smear campaign against him for the 2016 election.  Mack and Kelly insisted they were only in Lebanon Hills Regional Park for a "document exchange," but their story had some serious holes developing, such as why they couldn't exchange documents in the St. Paul office building they both share, why they decided to meet in a park no where near either of their districts, and in the day and age of electronic communication, why wasn't this document available in some sort of electronic form?  Quietly, on the Friday night before Labor Day weekend, both lawmakers paid their nuisance fine, insisted they were innocent of any wrong doing, and refused to comment further.

Mack and Kelly are grown adults.  People fall in and out of love all of the time, and the notion that two co-workers might have felt a spark for each other is nothing new.  I would've hoped they were adults about it, talking about any problems with their perspective families before going through with any potential affair, but my criticism is not about their implied affair.  That's their business.

I do raise an eyebrow in regards to the 'insisting they're innocent, but paying the fine' aspect of it.  If I was accused of something of that nature, and I knew I'd done nothing wrong, I'd be screaming bloody murder to clear my name, not paying the fine.  That aside, my biggest problem with this whole fiasco is how the newspapers, and most of the media in the Twin Cities, showed their pro conservative hand in their lack of coverage of the story.

Briana Bierschbach, the exceptional writer for MinnPost, said it best, political journalists HATE stories like the Mack/Kelly one.  Legitimate journalists don't want to cover it, but they have to due to the nature of the individuals involved in the infraction.  But what is becoming undeniable is how the media, on stories of this nature, ask one question first; what party are they from?  If it's a Republican, the story is written from a "nothing to see here" perspective, but if it's a Democrat, it's written from the "For Gods sake, the sky is on fire and we are all going to die!" perspective.  Neither is right.

The idea of media having a 'liberal agenda' is a made up lie to force US's mainstream media to the far right; a scarlet letter 'L' to terrify news rooms and editors.  The Republican's war wasn't with outfits like Democracy Now, a clearly pro-Progressive/Liberal news outlet (which for the record still reports their news stories fairly), but rather the NBC's, ABC's, CNN's and CBS's of the world.  The right wanted to make sure the narrative of any news story was pro-conservative from the get go.  This meant all responsible journalism had to go, and, frankly, they've far exceeded expectations.  In the last 25 years, conservatives have bought, threatened, paid off, tricked, bribed, acquired, fired and black listed reporters and editors labeled bad because they maintained a standard of neutral reporting and journalistic integrity.  This war on the media was never about facts; it was about driving an agenda.

This conservative bias has permeated down to the local media, with examples everywhere. The owners of broadcasting companies openly support Minnesota Republican candidates for office, even hosting fundraising events for them.  The media companies controlled by these people then seem to incorporate a double standard for political ad buys.  The company refuses left leaning ad buys against their candidate, insisting factual errors, whether they exist or not, negate them from running the ad against the Republican, but anything goes when it's an attack ad against the Democrat, even allowing bold face lies.  How about the Ebola scare, where the media in this town also drove the national narrative "ebola is everywhere(!), and it's the Democrats fault?"  Then, the day after the election, it just stopped, vanished as if Emily Litella said, "Never mind!"  And we should point a finger at 'pointer-gate,' the made up story by KSTP 5 which was nothing more than a political hit piece on Democratic Mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges; a story so outrageously stupid, it was mocked internationally in it's blatant attempt to smear her.

The Mack/Kelly story got very little coverage in this town.  The Pioneer Press was the first to have it, and they HAD to run it.  What they did was bury the story on page 3, nearly apologizing for having to report it, and writing it from a very pro-Mack and Kelly angle.  Over the next few days, a few media outlets mentioned it in passing, but usually as an "in other news..." story, or only as an online feature.  Even when Kelly and Mack paid their fines, seeming to contradict their assertions of innocence, pseudo-acknowledging culpability, media in this town shrugged it's shoulders and turned away.

Imagine if this was two Democrats caught in the same exact situation.  Both major newspapers in this town would run the story front page, above the fold.  They would report on hypothetical sexual acts, deeming each politician a pervert, calling for their immediate resignations.  The news departments of television and radio would follow suit, with exposes on the families, talking about the web of lies each politician was weaving.  The media would cover GOP press conferences live, amplifying the right's call for full investigations, demanding apologies from anyone who ever voted DFL, insisting all party leadership resign, and forcing everyone to only think of Democratic deviant sex come election day.  Bookend this with political ad buys, partially funded by the media owners themselves, mudslinging and smearing like a full contact, finger painting class in a swamp.

Then, the day after the election, when it all just stops, the GOP and the media's political 'experts,' will insist the sex scandal had nothing to with the election results.  "No one EVER mentioned the sex scandal.  This was a rejection of DFL ideals!"

Think I'm exaggerating?  How about the manufactured outrage when the Dems were accused of boozing it up in the Capitol, or the way the Wellstone Memorial was turned into a weapon against the Dems, with GOP'ers insisting THEY were on only ones showing any REAL respect for Senator Paul Wellstone.  This is their game plan, and they've played this game and won, over and over and over again.

Mack/Kelly should be covered, and not in an apologetic or bias manner.  It should have been featured in most major news casts, not left for tertiary news outlets and fringe reporting formats.  It shouldn't have led the news, but it should have been there.  I don't think it should've been covered like a meteor crashing into the planet, but it should've been covered, whether the journalists like to or not.

The news days of my great uncle Cedric Adams are long gone, wiped away, as was predicted by the great movie 'Network,' 40 years ago.  The best bet for us is a new cultivation of competent news outlets, ones not driven by the accounting departments, ones like MinnPost.  Until then, here's the link for the Japanese animation version of the Mack/Kelly story.  For some reason, while the Twin Cities news media yawned, they thought it was worth covering, and funny, they rightly call out the distance to the parking lot Mack and Kelly used, and how it was nowhere near St. Paul.  I shouldn't have to go to the other side of the planet for actual fair and balanced Minneapolis/St. Paul news coverage.