Editor & Publisher‘s Joe Strupp asks that question about the arrest, guilty plea and now denial of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig.
Strupp writes “even Roll Call reporter John McArdle, who broke the story late Monday, admits he only received word of the arrest and subsequent guilty plea via a tip last week.” ‘You would think in the 24-hour news cycle, something like this would slip through, said McArdle, ‘He wanted to keep it quiet, and he almost got away with it.'”
Dean Baquet, The NYTimes D.C. Bureau chief told E&P “I am not so shocked that it would not get out. It was not in his state. My guess is if it had happened at La Guardia Airport or at an airport in Washington it might be different.”
Perhaps more surprising, Sen. Craig had been under scrutiny since late last year, when a blogger posted allegations that Craig had had relationships with men. Strupp writes, the “blog item was eventually reported by several news outlets nationally and locally.”
Including in the Post Register of Idaho Falls. Dean Miller, the editor of the paper says at the time “there was nothing documented, you were not going to substantiate anything. Outing a closeted U.S. senator was not our highest priority. But there were members of the staff who disagreed with that strenuously, that it was everyone’s absolute right to know.”