I have to admit, I’m a little surprised the Alishtari story isn’t a bigger deal. If the DCCC had accepted money from an accused terrorist financier, and kept the money, it seems safe to assume it’d get quite a bit of attention.<\/p>\n
For those of you just joining us, here’s a quick review. Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari (aka Michael Mixon) is currently facing federal charges for allegedly providing material support to terrorists. Alishtari is also a generous Republican donor<\/a> contributing more than $15,000 in the ’02 and ’04 cycles to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and having been named to the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s “Inner Circle Leadership Committee.” GOP officials acknowledged Tuesday that they took money from an accused terrorist financier, but decided that they won’t return the money<\/a>.<\/p>\n The AP picked up on the story yesterday, which I thought might help propel the controversy to the front page. No such luck. Of the nation’s major daily newspapers, only the New York Daily News has written a stand-alone article on the controversy (a handful of others have mentioned it briefly, but didn’t publish articles). Literally, that gives us a grand total of two<\/i> articles in the leading papers since Alishtari’s arrest, both from the same paper.<\/p>\n What about broadcast media? MSNBC mentioned this story just once (Olbermann devoted about a half-minute to the story on Monday) and CNN mentioned it just once on Tuesday (Jacki Schechner gave it about a minute on the Situation Room — because the blogs were talking about it). Fox News, ABC, CBS, and NBC haven’t mentioned it at all.<\/p>\n