Story Suggestion for Diane Sawyer: Possible Discrimination at the DOJ

My name is Hippocritico and I’m here to help my friends in the mainstream media protect their journalistic legacies by making sure they don’t come off as brazen, biased, hypocrites by covering a particular story that hurts one political party and not covering a similar story that hurts a different one.

Diane Sawyer and ABC News are obviously very concerned with issues of discrimination in America. Last night all kinds of time was devoted to covering the NAACP’s condemnation of the Tea Party movement — the same NAACP that didn’t condemn the SEIU for beating Kenneth Gladney. ABC News also covered an event that’s now famous for never really happening:

Late word from Washington tonight about just how ugly the crowds gathered outside the Longworth office building have become. We learned that as Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri was leaving his office someone in the crowd spit on him. There are also reports of racial and homophobic slurs, one targeting Congressman John Lewis, the famous civil rights champion, and the other involving Congressman Barney Frank. You can listen in for yourself.

On election day 2008, members of the New Black Panthers were caught on tape intimidating voters outside of a polling place in Philadelphia. Here’s the video in case you missed it:

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After this incident, the Bush Justice Department filed charges against three men and the New Black Panther Party. The case was won and then for reasons we still can’t understand, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department dropped the charges.

But this is where the story get even more intriguing…

Former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams has recently become what journalists love most, a government Whistle-blower, alleging there are people in the Justice Department refusing to take seriously any case where the defendants are black and the plaintiffs white. In other words, he’s claiming that discriminatory practices are ongoing. In case you missed it, here’s the video:

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I’m not unsympathetic to the fact that Media Matters has spent the month of July going all out hoping to scare you away from covering this story and that Keith Olbermann has done a little water-muddying with the shameless use of a distinction without a difference.

But I have faith that Media Matters and Olbermann do not call the editorial shots at ABC News and now that the facts of what could be a very big and important story have been presented, you will proceed with the same diligence and vigor we saw when the story wasn’t at all true.