Wednesday, August 29, 2007

What took the Craig arrest so long to get out?

As noted here yesterday, N4N learned of the arrest late Monday of US Senator Larry Craig of Idaho via the Soxaholix Sox blog. That the arrest occurred nearly three months ago has led to questions about why it took the press so long to catch up with it.

As the trade publication Editor & Publisher reports,

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, a four-year veteran of the Capitol Hill daily. "He wanted to keep it quiet, and he almost got away with it."

Even more surprising is that the unreported arrest occurred at a time when Craig was under scrutiny following previous allegations of gay relationships and sexual advances dating back to late 2006, when a blogger accused Craig of having relationships with men. The conservative senator has long denied the allegations.

McArdle said the latest incident, in which Craig was arrested June 11 for allegedly making advances to a police officer in a Minnesota airport bathroom, only came to his attention through a tip he received last week.

Here's a response, via Minnesota's CityPages (h/t Romenesko):

. . . over at MnSpeak, WCCO reporter Jason DeRusha offers four plausible answers.

DeRusha writes:

1. Airport Police are a pain in the neck... and extremely secretive. Even yesterday, no one would come back to the office to send us the report or give us the mug shot. "They close at 4 p.m." is what I was told.
2. Because airport police is separate from Minneapolis Police, or the Sheriff's office, media would have to go to the airport to request reports. The arrest information doesn't leave their property, and as the charge was a minor charge, I don't think it even went to the county attorney. It was like a ticket.

3. No one locally would raise an eyebrow about a "disorderly conduct" at the airport for a guy named Larry Craig even if they saw the report's front page.

4. The plea deal at the courthouse happened the week after the bridge collapse. So the usual suspects who would have tipped someone off, were too busy with other things to even concentrate on this.

Sounds plausible to me.

Crime | Media | Republicans