FrankenNet and the MSM: Finally!

The Washington Post finally hauls off on Air America in the Gloria Wise scandal (although as the reporter notes, "Like everyone else who has paid attention - this excluded the New York Times for the first 16 days after the story broke - the people who work for New York's attorney general understand the scandal that flushed hundreds of poor Bronx kids out of summer camp and back to their tenement stoops by its proper name: the Air America Radio Network Scandal") with the report we've been waiting for for almost three weeks:

Details of the transfers remain vague. But most now believe the total was almost $900,000. The transfers - you'll note we assiduously are avoiding calling them "loans" - appear to have been arranged by Evan Cohen, who at the time was propitiously (for him and Air America) the development director for Gloria Wise and a founding director of the fledgling liberal talk-show network.

Cohen no longer holds either position. No one even seems to know where to find him. For truth-seekers (which until Friday excluded the completely uninterested New York Times), that's discouraging. For Air America and its avid supporters, though, it constitutes superb cover.

It was Cohen! We couldn't stop him! He was crazy!

Snap!

The WaPo finally shows some of the smack that we know they don't just reserve for, say Republicans or Bob Novak.

Oh ye of little faith! The mainstream east coat media will get tough on its own!

Air America put up a statement on its Web site referring to "the allegations of mismanagement and corruption" at Gloria Wise. Like the financial mess has nothing to do with its beneficiaries.

Left unsaid in the Air America version of reality, though, is that with the exception of Cohen and one other principal, the current owners of Air America are largely the same people who owned the network when Cohen was leading its fund-raising charge.

Oh, they've changed the company name. They've rearranged a few deck chairs. But the legal distinctions they have erected are in place precisely to protect them from the responsibility to pay off the debts, including the Gloria Wise "loans," incurred while Cohen was working side by side with them.

After the NYTimes' paltry, tardy effort last week - involving bowdlerized references and a Dowdified quote from Al Franken - it's good to even see some actual reporting going on:

On July 19, 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported about what it called Air America's "restructuring."

Along with Air America Chief Executive Doug Kreeger, original Air America investors Anita and Sheldon Drobny formed a new ownership group, Piquant LLC, the Tribune reported.

Tribune reporter John Cook wrote: "The purpose of the transaction is twofold: to eliminate (founding investor Evan) Cohen and his partner Rex Sorensen's shares in the company and to insulate the cash-strapped network from any debt or other obligation that Cohen may have incurred."

Now, what might those debts and other obligations include? Hmmmm.

Thanks, east coast media! My faith is restored.

UPDATE: OK, I lied. The story was actually a Doug MacEachern op-ed from the Arizona Republic.

What, you thought the WaPo would cover this?

Posted by Mitch at August 15, 2005 07:45 AM | TrackBack