Carl Bernstein reminds us of a huge scandal which has not yet received true media scrutiny, and wonders why?

Courtesy of Carl Bernstein:  

So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press. 

In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election. 

Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations. 

All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3. 

Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes' and Murdoch's disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country's political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch's, Ailes' and Fox's contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process. 

The tone of the media's reaction was set from the beginning by the Post's own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.

Bernstein makes some very good points, WHY hasn't this story blown up the way other, far less explosive, stories have?

Here's more:

And here let us posit the following: were an emissary of the president of NBC News, or of the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post ever caught on tape promising what Ailes and Murdoch had apparently suggested and offered here, the hue and cry, especially from Fox News and Republican/Tea Party America, from the Congress to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, would be deafening and not be subdued until there was a congressional investigation, and the resignations were in hand of the editor and publisher of the network or newspaper. Or until there had been plausible and convincing evidence that the most important elements of the story were false. And, of course, the story would continue day after day on page one and remain near the top of the evening news for weeks, until every ounce of (justifiable) piety about freedom of the press and unfettered presidential elections had been exhausted. 

You know Fox New pimped the Benghazi story every single day, like a dog worrying a meatless bone, until there was an investigation, and afterward they STILL remain unsatisfied and continue to beat the drums as if they are on the trail of the next Watergate.

But THIS story which appears to be an ACTUAL scandal, and even features audio tape to back it up, receives hardly a mention, And when it does get mentioned it is treated with nothing approaching the kind of scrutiny that an attempt by a media giant to purchase a Presidential candidate and use their empire to get them elected SHOULD have received!

Why IS that exactly? Are we that cynical? Do we simply expect News Corp and Fox News to always break the rules? Or is Rupert Murdoch so powerful now that our media is simply too intimidated to take him, and Fox News, on in any substantive way?

Personally I think this should discredit Fox News for all time, and be used to shut them down. And that an investigation should be launched that saw Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and General Petraeus answering serious questions before Congress.

Oh, I almost forgot, Congress WORKS for Fox News.