The Press is Biased toward Scandal.

But apparently only some kinds of scandal. There is a big splash over a Kennedy's car wreck today, but relatively little over an unfolding corruption scandal that has tracks leading deep into the woods of the intelligence community. Josh Marshall makes the argument:

And, while the Kennedy story is 'newsy' it doesn't really have any greater policy implications. And the public trust implications are minor. The Wilkes-Watergate-Hooker story, on the other hand, is both. It's salacious, which the press loves. And it's also directly tied to crooks ripping off taxpayers, probably allowing our service members abroad to have shoddy equipment or defense dollars going to worthless projects.

So is it that the press is just not willing to invest in the more complex story? With the Kennedy scandal, the story comes pre-packaged, and you just fill in the names. With the Hookergate story, you would have to actually crib a lot of the material from Talkingpointsmemo. No, seriously, you would have to educate your readers and viewers. It's not that the press isn't willing to do that; the press doesn't seem to have the capacity to do that. It takes another arm of publicity to cultivate the audience in the first place, perhaps.

Or there's the other argument. The press doesn't seem highly motivated to get these Republican crooks, for whatever reason. Not as intellectually satisfying, but not to be dismissed out of hand.