This just in, the "Major Media" is still dead to the Gunwalker Scandal. Monday represents crisis for New York Times, Washington Post, NBC and ABC

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer scans the headlines of the Washington Post with satisfaction. No Gunwalker Scandal yet. "You've got to give Grimaldi credit," he thinks, "a little caviar and vodka as a bribe goes a long way."

Monday the Gunwalker Scandal begins to go on the record under oath. By Wednesday it will be a real, incontrovertible official scandal. This represents a crisis for those "major media" outlets who have said little (the WaPo) or nothing (NYT, NBC & ABC) about a scandal that has been building since early January.


ABC: AWOL on Gunwalker.

Even the LA Times, which was going great guns for a while, has dropped off the Gunwalker media radar. The only folks who have been consistent throughout are Sharyl Attkisson at CBS (who, prior to yesterday, seems to have been having difficulty breaking any of her stories into broadcast from the blog cellar she has been relegated to) and William LaJeunesse at FOX.


NBC: The Blind Peacock.

But come Monday, the Peacock, the LOST network and the Old Grey Lady will be scooped by C-SPAN, for cryin' out loud. Are their political prejudices so strong that they can continue to ignore a scandal the size of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but with more blood and bodies?


The New York Times: Expect the World, just don't expect us to cover the Gunwalker Scandal.

They may continue to ignore the story, of course, but after Monday they do so at their own peril. For to do so proves their increasing impotence and irrelevancy. Even if they don't notice, history will.

This scandal -- broken by the new media, fanned by popular demand created through the American Samizdat of the blogs, picked up by national legislators who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the story by the letters, faxes and emails of that same blogosphere audience -- will be the defining moment of 21st Century media history in the United States. David Codrea and I are both proud and humbled to have been in at the beginning of this new paradigm.


The New Icon of the "Major Media": the Pharaoh's scribe, writing down every official word.

But what of the Pharaoh's scribes of NYT, ABC, NBC and even Pravda, the WaPo, the home-town newspaper of this scandal? Why, years from now, with their grand-kids on their knees, when they are asked "What did you do in the great Gunwalker Scandal, Grandpa?", they'll have to mumble "Well, I shoveled shit in the Sarah Palin e-mails."


WaPo reporter James Grimaldi plies his trade.