OK Press Should Take Notes from Their Missouri Colleagues

OK media lap dogs drop the ball on Sen. ‘Dirty” Harry Coates “stolen documents” case

“The Star, AP and St. Louis paper seek to join Blunt e-mail case” - Kansas City Star 6/11/08

This headline – and similar headlines – were front and center yesterday on the websites of all the major Missouri news organizations yesterday. Although it’s outrageous for an “objective and unbiased” press to purposely inject itself into the middle of a hot Governor’s race by joining a lawsuit by the attorney general against the governor, there are those who would argue that an aggressive press that is willing to expose corruption and inform the public is a good thing. It really all comes down to a question of motive doesn’t it? Did I mention that the Democrat attorney general is also currently running for governor?

All of the above is really just a set up for the rest of this post. We celebrated the two month anniversary yesterday of Sen. “Dirty Harry” Coate’s infamous “somebody stole my documents” press conference at the Capital. “Dirty” swore that he was going to get to the bottom of this and that somebody was going to pay! It’s been two months now and the public still has not received an accounting of the final results from the taxpayer paid investigation. OKPNS is calling for the Capital police to immediately release the videos and the results of the investigation.

More importantly, where is the Oklahoma press, the esteemed fourth estate, the defenders of the first amendment? The public has a right to know if there is a skillful Houdini out there that crept into Coates’ office unseen and unheard and slipped away with Chesapeake’s master plan to repeal HB 1804 – or as what is commonly believed – Coates simply left the documents in a Capital restroom. Either way, the public has a right to know.