Ask not where's the outrage, ask where's the coverage

In an editorial recently, the Erie Times-News asserted
that reform of the Pennsylvania General Assembly's
legislative practices is so "serious" and the
investigation into them by the attorney general is so
"important, but has itself consistently failed to give those
issues the serious coverage they deserve.

The editorial said "The bonus scandal may not
have raised as much outrage yet as the pay raises."

The bonus scandal has diverted millions of taxpayer
dollars to partisan political election campaigns,
illegally kept bona fide third party candidates off
the ballot and thoroughly corrupted Pennsylvania's
statewide electoral process. It's far more outrageous
than the despicable midnight pay raise debacle.

Yet except for a scathing column or two by Pat Howard,
it has received little meaningful coverage by the
Times-News, which accounts for the dearth of public
outrage in this area.

As the only daily newspaper in Pennsylvania's fourth
or fifth largest city, the Times-News has long shirked
its responsibility to staff the legislature and the
governor's office in Harrisburg on a fulltime basis,
relying mainly on anemic AP coverage and occasional
rewrites or pick-ups of other newspaper's articles
for its meager coverage of the state legislature's
and the governor's enormous impact on our daily lives.

Why, for example has Governor Ed Rendell expressed
no outrage over bonusgate or the lack of legislative
reform? Is it because so far only legislators within
his political party have been implicated?

At the very least, The Times-News should make the half
dozen area legislators of both parties within its
coverage area accountable for their actions in
Harrisburg and investigate what role, if any, they
may have played in the bonusgate scandal.

Did they, for example, with their votes or silence,
actively or clandestinely, support the vile decisions
and actions by their leadership - especially by the
unctuous majority Leader Bill DeWeese - which led to
the indictments, with many more to come?