ABC drops the ball on DeLay story

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been up to his ears in scandal of late. After already having been admonished by the House Ethics Committee four times in his career, DeLay is under intense fire for a series of new scandals that have led some congressional Republicans to wonder out loud if he’ll even be able to maintain his leadership post.

And to help inform the public about the Majority Leader’s difficulties, which are dominating political discussions in DC, ABC News is reporting … nothing in particular.

As of this post, ABC News is the only one of the three network news outlets not to have reported on recent revelations that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) accepted lavish, all-expense-paid trips to South Korea and Britain, apparently in violation of House rules forbidding members from accepting travel expenses from registered lobbyists.

On March 15, NBC’s Nightly News and CBS’ Evening News both covered the DeLay ethics story. CBS’ The Early Show reported it on March 16, and the CBS Evening News followed up with a brief report that evening.

And yet, ABC, which at one point claimed to be the nation’s most popular source of news, remains silent.

Where’s the liberal media when we need it?

I mentioned yesterday the inherent difficulties Dems have in demonizing DeLay’s ethically-challenged record because so few Americans know who he is. But ABC is contributing to the problem by refusing to report on what any reasonable person (and other networks) consider news.

Reports about DeLay’s lobbyist-funded trips to England and South Korea were literally front-page news. Dems are demanding action, DeLay has been forced to respond, and pundits are abuzz. Moreover, DeLay is not just some random House backbencher that reporters are unfamiliar with — he’s arguably the most powerful man in Congress.

So, where’s ABC?