Guest Blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound… While cable news dutifully devotes nonstop coverage to the latest random criminal cases — kidnappings, shootouts, murderous love triangles, car chases — it’s telling when a supposed break in one of the biggest manhunts in FBI history, for a terrorist who murdered and poisoned multiple American citizens with anthrax, takes a back seat to nearly every other story. That is, if it’s mentioned at all.

Even as details, leaks, and a burgeoning list of questions bubbled to the surface last week, demanding serious scrutiny, the big three broadcast networks were equally blasé. Some nights skipping mention of the unfolding story altogether, as did last Tuesday’s editions of CBS Evening News and ABC World News (though both that evening reported the eminently newsworthy story of a thrill-seeking English couple who married while being strapped outside separate airplanes). On the same night, Brian Williams afforded 39 precious seconds to the anthrax investigation on NBC Nightly News.

In covering one of the most historic criminal investigations in our nation’s history, the worst bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil, the overall tenor and quality of network reporting (as well as much of the work in mainstream print media) has been nothing short of disgraceful. What America saw, instead, was a dearth of circumspection and a paucity of competent investigative work that mirrors the most feckless moments of the last eight years…

This coverage, delivered in an Orwellian bubble world where our brazenly criminal administration still earns the benefit of the doubt, is all the more indefensible when you factor in the reality this is a Bush administration investigation, one which had already dragged on for almost seven years, during which time the government was forced to cough up nearly $6 million to settle with a previously wrongly accused man whose reputation and personal life it had destroyed.

As the story unraveled, coverage almost invariably not only failed to address questions that would be obvious to fictional adolescent sleuths Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys but also showcased a breathless zeal to help the Department of Justice prosecute Ivins through unfiltered and uncorroborated leaks — from accusations of “therapist” Jean Duley (Ivins was a homicidal killer who threatened her life and planned to kill all of his colleagues in a final “blaze of glory”), a woman known to have a fairly lengthy police record (news that failed to reach national mainstream outlets until the day the FBI/DOJ publicly aired their case, before disappearing again; plus, to my knowledge, Duley’s police record has yet to receive network airtime), whose depth of experience appeared at least suspect (she was still attending Hood College as of last year and, while various media reports called her a “psychiatrist,” “psychologist,” or “social worker,” it turns out Duley is actually an “addictions counselor“) whose affidavit, including the misspelling “theripist” and manic, haphazard penmanship, appears as if it were written by either a second grader or an unstable adult (investigative journalist Larisa Alexandrovna has more on Duley);

Full Story: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6270