At 13:48 CDT today, I received the following request from KELO-TV:

Cory,

We’d like you to adjust the title of this blog entry: [URL] along with any other instances of this wording within the blog post.

Thanks,

Jonathan García
Web Producer
KELOLAND.com

Travis at Badlands Blue makes a good point: why is the South Dakota media giving Senator John Thune a pass on his vote against the Franken amendment, a nay vote which some have characterized as a vote that protects malfeasant government defense contractors and makes it harder for women to seek legal recourse for abuse in the workplace. Senator Franken's amendment ot the defense appropriations bill sought to withhold defense contracts from companies "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." When Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones alleged that she was gang raped by coworkers at Halliburton and then locked in a storage container for 24 hours without food, water, or a bed and threatened, Halliburton/KBR tried to force her into binding arbitration instead of being able to take the case to court.

Angie at Dakota Women opened the story for discussion in the South Dakota blogosphere two weeks ago, even beating Jon Stewart to the punch. Yet as far as I know, only one professional reporter in this state has seen fit to ask our Senator why he would vote against Senator Franken's amendment to prohibit federal money from going toward defense contractors who force their employees to give up their civil rights.

(Reminder of the Jon Stewart position: we'll bust ACORN for giving bad advice to a fake pimp, but we keep pumping millions of federal dollars to corporations whose employees commit offenses like those committed by Halliburton/KBR employees in Baghdad, offenses that have been widely referred to in the press as allegedly including gang rape?)

That one bright, shining exception: Kevin Woster (of course!) does good journalism and takes up the issue in a Sunday report in the Rapid City Journal discussing possible Dem challengers to Thune in 2010. (If you've read others, do let me know!)

But Thune's hometown rag, that Sioux Falls paper? Nothing. The Sioux Falls TV "news"? Nope, zip, nada.

Senator Thune puts the profits of Halliburton and other Republican money machines over the protection of women and the prosecution of actual offenses like those committed by Halliburton/KBR employees in Baghdad, offenses that have been widely referred to in the press as allegedly including gang rape, and no one making money for reporting news—at least no one on this side of the river—thinks it might be worth asking the Senator to clarify his position?

As Travis notes, so much for the "Liberal Media." If you want liberal media in South Dakota, you have to do it yourself.

...comments and further suggestions for revision welcome at the Madville Times...