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Rich Zeoli Column: The Media Ignores The Senator Menendez Trial

Private jets ferrying a United States Senator to party with gorgeous supermodels at lush tropical resorts? Political favors and charges of presidential revenge? One hundred million dollars stolen from Medicare to pay for the lavish lifestyle and fill campaign coffers?

If this story isn't the stuff of blockbuster political drama, I don't know what is. It's actually playing out in a federal courthouse in Newark, New Jersey in the bribery and corruption trial of United States Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. Yet, the mainstream media, the same media that can't quench its insatiable thirst for sex and politics, is completely ignoring this story. Netflix made a smash hit series based on political corruption, and the charges in the the Menendez trial would stun even Frank Underwood.

The show "Scandal," which features a lot of sex and political corruption, is a hit show on ABC. This is a real life political scandal involving sex and corruption and ABC News doesn't seem to care!

Actually, if anyone proposed this as a new political show, producers would say it was way too unrealistic. It would go something like this:

A sitting United States Senator is accused of accepting bribes and millions in campaign contributions in exchange for helping a "friend," get away with defrauding Medicare for $100 million. As a favor to his friend, the Senator also helps exquisite foreign supermodels obtain US visas after their applications are denied. The supermodels party with the Senator on luxurious tropical vacations paid for by the friend who ferries the Senator, and the supermodels, from Washington to the Caribbean on private jets.

 

Those around the Senator whisper that the (now former) President, a member of the Senator's political party, is unleashing his Department of Justice because the Senator is blocking diplomatic relations with Cuba. The Senator, the son of Cuban immigrants, says this is political revenge and a ploy by Cuban intelligence agents to smear him. He won't be intimidated and will fight this deal even if it means he is jailed like a petty political prisoner in Havana!

 

Here's a plot twist: the evil Governor of the state was once the United States Attorney and hired the very prosecutors making the case against the Senator. His term is ending and his future job prospects are bleak. If the Senator is convicted before his term ends in January, the Governor could appoint himself to the Senate seat.

 

As the clock ticks, the fate of a late night comic's child could soon be decided by a razor thin margin the United States Senate as they vote to repeal the nation's health care law. Will the Senator go to Washington to save the law in a Mr. Stewart moment or will he stay in the courtroom to show the jury he is serous about his innocence thus sealing the fate of a late night comic's child?

 

The clock is ticking.

I know, I know, way too unrealistic. I guess the media thinks so as well.

Our friends at the Media Research Center have done an analysis of coverage between September 5 through the morning September 20:

CNN has devoted a total of 14 minutes, 11 seconds.

ABC 1 whole minute and 48 seconds. So if you round that up, it's almost two minutes.

CBS 22 seconds. To be fair, that's practically 30 seconds.

NBC ZERO seconds. Once more with feeling: ZERO POINT ZERO seconds.

What media bias I ask you?

I did leave out one thing. Robert Melendez is a Democrat.

I take it all back.

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