Daschle and the Media -

Daschle and the Media - South Dakota's major newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, has been in bed with Tom Daschle throughout his career.

Talon News - a web site which has been working the story - takes it from here:

After two weeks of stonewalling, Randell Beck, Executive Editor of South Dakota's largest newspaper, the Argus Leader, finally acknowledged the relationship of its political reporter to Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD). Wednesday's admission of David Kranz's 35-year friendship with the Senate Minority Leader came during a Sioux Falls radio talk show hosted by Greg Belfrage on station KELO AM.

Kranz and the Argus Leader have been at the center of a controversy that began when potential Senate candidate Neal Tapio revealed the ties in a press release. Tapio implied that the newspaper's reporting has been excessively favorable to Daschle and the Democrats and unusually harsh to their critics and Republican candidates. The New York Times and Washington-based Roll Call criticized the Argus Leader's biased reporting in the 1990 South Dakota senate race.

In addition to the obvious media bias angle, the story includes hints of the new media/old media conflict; Talon News doesn't get any respect from South Dakota's elite news organizations:

KELO's Belfrage declined Talon News request for a representative to appear on the program. He wrote, "Midcontinent Radio considers this to be a dispute between Talon News and the Argus Leader." A call to KELO's General Manager Mike Costanzo with the same request was not returned.

Full Disclosure: I used to work for a Midcontinental affiliate. They were the most half-assed media company I ever encountered.

Posted by Mitch at August 21, 2003 09:21 AM