One would think that if a semi-prominent person is involved in an underage pornography ring it would generate its fair share of headlines. But when that individual is a member of the press, we do not see the salacious headlines, and the alleged culprit’s own paper takes a demure approach. It is a pattern we have seen in the past.
The story that seeped out through the weekend was that federal agents raided the home of Thomas LeGro. According to reports from investigators, during a long-running operation stemming from leads with an online payment system used by child pornographers, they were led to LeGro’s home. There, they located a smashed hard drive and confiscated his laptop where a number of video files were discovered with compromising content.
LeGro is an 18-year veteran at the paper, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for being part of the team that looked into the Roy Moore issues, where allegations of sexual assault torpedoed his Senate campaign. Now LeGro is facing his own career-ending charges.
To its credit, the Washington Post did run an article about the arrest, albeit in veiled fashion. It was covered in the Local Crime section – but only available to those with a subscription. This unenthusiastic response is seen across the media spectrum.
Apart from some of the more right-of-center outlets – Fox News, New York Post, and The Washington Examiner – there is not much to be seen from the balance of the news spectrum. Of note we have yet to see any interest from CNN’s news and media “expert” Brian Stelter on this story, but this too follows a pattern.
Two years ago a CNN producer was sentenced to 19 years in prison for coaxing a woman to fly her nine-year-old across the country for sexual favors. Prior to that, a former producer for Jake Tapper was arrested for child exploitation charges. These stories did not exactly garner widespread coverage at the network. Similarly this January the Washington Post was not too enthusiastic to loudly report that a syndicated Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist whose work ran in the paper had also been charged with possession of child porn.
Previously though we have seen a willingness in The Post to cover this topic broadly – albeit in selective fashion. In one case of a child porn arrest it involved an individual who previously had worked as a strategist for a Senate Republican conference. Despite the tangential former political connection, The Post saw fit to include “GOP” in the headline.
In a later case we saw a less enthusiastic effort to assign party guilt. When the mayor of College Park, Maryland was arrested and charged with 80 counts of possessing and distributing child porn, The Post ran a number of reports and somehow could never find the column space to include that he was a Democrat.
In a topic as charged and as repugnant as preying on children, most would agree that uniform disgust and contempt would be the common thread in the reporting. Instead what we see is an interpretational approach to the individuals involved. Party affiliation, and especially connections to the media industry, will determine the level of coverage. That is, if any coverage takes place at all.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie.
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