Impeached Federal Judge, except you wouldn't know that

The headline in the Miami Herald is mundane: "Florida Rep. Hastings accused of sexual harassment." The story even more so.

A conservative watchdog group filed suit Monday against Rep. Alcee Hastings on behalf of a woman who says the Broward Democrat sexually harassed her when she worked for him.

The conservative watchdog group is Judicial Watch. The gist of the story is that a female staffer accused the Democrat representative of sexual harassment.

They were working for the U.S. Commission on Cooperation and Security in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission. Hastings served as chair and co-chair at the commission, which is an independent U.S. government agency. End of story as far as the Miami Herald is concerned.

THE UNWRITTEN part of the story is what the hell is an impeached Federal judge doing representing the U.S. in such a capacity? He was impeached for bribery and perjury in 1988 in a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 413-3. Convicted in the U.S. Senate in 1989 he becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate.
Wikipedia entry

The Miami Herald doesn't mention that little fact at all. Nor is it mentioned in the Palm Beach Post story, although the Palm Beach paper does expand on the Miami Herald with a final sentence: "Judicial Watch is a conservative group that has primarily targeted Democrats, but also sued the Bush administration over private meetings by former Vice President Dick Cheney's energy commission."

But these newspapers and others can't claim they were unaware of the fact Hastings had been impeached. It's in the final sentence of the Judicial Watch press release. Most egregious is the St. Petersburg Times who ran the story through a blog that only ran Hastings' response. Egregious because the St. Petersburg Times owns the Poynter Institute.

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalists. It offers workshops and interactive courses for broadcast and print journalism for use by educators and students.

Its courses include programs on leadership and management, news reporting and writing, producing news for broadcast and online, ethics and diversity, and visual journalism. It also has a variety of learning resources such as a research library.

Founded in 1975 by Nelson Poynter, chairman of the St. Petersburg Times and its Washington affiliate, Congressional Quarterly, the Institute was bequeathed his controlling stock in the Times Publishing Co. in 1978. As a financially independent, nonprofit organization, The Poynter Institute is beholden to no interest except its own mission: to help journalists seek and achieve excellence. The Times Publishing Company publishes the St. Petersburg Times, and operates Congressional Quarterly and other publications.

(The St. Petersburg Times also owns PolitiFact.com - a fact checker "truth-o-meter.")

Poynter's own blogger Jim Romenesko didn't even carry the story in his media news blog, not even to chide the reporters for their lack of research on the story.

It wouldn't have been hard to find out. In the St. Petersburg Times' archives there is a 2006 story about how Hastings past scuttles intelligence chairmanship. "Florida Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, a prominent black politician with a troubled past, was turned down as chairman of the House committee that oversees the nation's spy apparatus." By his fellow Democrats.

How flagrant can you be in deceiving the public?