We’ve noted previously that
Democratic North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan has a
tough race for re-election against a Republican
challenger and a potential
Libertarian Party spoiler named Sean Haugh. The National
Journal has a
lengthy look at how the race has played out so far.
She also has a bit of a scandal that didn’t appear to be gaining
much national traction, but some very unusual self-censorship by a
top television station and a top newspaper in North Carolina may
change the situation.
To summarize: Kay Hagan’s family—her husband, son, and
son-in-law—is accused of receiving more than $250,000 in stimulus
funds from 2009 to renovate buildings owned by their companies.
This would present a potential conflict of interest and could
potentially be a violation of state and federal law. Carolina
Journal has a
story here stating that North Carolina’s Department of
Environment and Natural Resources has recommended that an auditor
review the grant (solar company subsidies are the source of the
grant, for anybody wondering why that particular agency is
involved). The Carolina Journal has embedded PDFs of the
reports for review.
Over the weekend it appeared the major media outlets were
picking up on the controversy right before the election. Stories
appeared on the websites for the Charlotte Observer and
Charlotte-based CBS affiliate WBTV. WBTV apparently provided
the story to both outlets. The story was just a reporting of the
contents of the same documents the Carolina Journal got
its hands on. It doesn’t actually accuse Kagan or her family
directly of wrong-doing; rather, the report calls for “further
legal review” out of concern that there may have been
wrong-doing.
But today both stories are gone, scrubbed from the sites, and
some are calling foul. The Observer tweeted this morning that
WBTV had provided the story and asked for it to be yanked and the
Observer complied. WBTV has not tweeted any sort
of explanation as to why it yanked the story as yet. And so the
media in North Carolina is being accused of aiding and abetting
Hagan in a tight race.
Nothing can be deleted from the Internet, so The
Federalist pulled up the cache of the story and has it
posted here. A read-through of it can confirm what I described
a couple of paragraphs ago. The story is simply describing the
contents of a report from the state’s Department of Environment and
Natural Resources. There could potentially be a logical reason for
yanking the story if it turned out the documents themselves were
counterfeit, but that itself would be extremely newsworthy.
Instead, there’s just silence so far.
In the absence of an official explanation, the disappearance of
the stories is itself trending as news. Just doing a
Google news search of Hagan (just her name with no other key
words) brought up a collection of stories from political sites
wondering why the Observer and WBTV deleted the
coverage.
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