The New York Times still hasn’t covered the burgeoning Air Enron financial mess. And the NY Times ombudsman had nothing to say on Sunday:

The public editor’s column will return next week.

But the Times’ online “Readers’ Forum on the Public Editor” does include a good post about the newspaper’s failure to cover the Air America/Gloria Wise investigations. Snippet:

Tell me oh Public Editor dear, are the people of the City and State of New York not (part) of the “public” the *NY* Times reports on and circulates to?

You cannot or will not even report on Air America, but going after the defenseless Roberts kids? Why that’s perfectly fine!

Remind me again what the point behind your office is, please?

Captain Ed has an MSM scandal compare and contrast.

Meanwhile, Brian Maloney breaks more news this morning with a piece revealing apparent cash flow problems at Air America:

It’s bad enough the company is generating fresh bad publicity almost daily, over the diverted $875,000 in taxpayer funds intended for a Bronx-based community service organization.

Now, to make matters worse, an internal memo obtained by the Radio Equalizer indicates Air America Radio employees faced late paychecks just over a week ago.

They were apparently stunned to receive a last-minute notice sent at 5:09pm Thursday, July 28th, indicating direct deposits would not be made Friday, as expected…

In typical Air America/Air Enron style, the management is blaming the payroll processing company for the delay. Maloney reports:

Worried insiders think the real problem may be something far more alarming: a lack of ready cash to make payroll on Friday, July 29th.

According to sources, it was a race against the clock to pay staffers that day, one that failed. An expected cash infusion arrived late, causing the mad scramble.

What a miserable weekend that must have been for the network’s shafted workers, wondering about the fate of their next paychecks…

Where’s Paul Krugman–champion of the working man, crusader against corporate fraud–when you need him? Hmmm?

Update: Blogger/journalist Don Surber has a good post on the corruption of non-profit charities and promises more. Surber has reported on the problem in West Virginia for the Charleston Daily Mail. Would be nice if someone working for a big-city paper in, say, New York City would take interest.

Update II: Leon H. at Macho Nachos, who has provided continuing analysis of the scandal the N.Y. Times won’t cover, has a prediction:

Every day that the Times allows this to go by is another day they are tacitly saying that defrauding a public charity is no big deal, so long as it is done by those with a liberal agenda. Every day the bloggers and other national newspapers discover this story while the Times remains silent, the virtually non-existent credibility of the Grey Lady takes another serious hit.

We’re just here manning the clock.

There is one other thing that I’d like to point out about this whole situation. If it’s true that the new ownership of Air America is under no legal obligation to repay the loan in question, then why is the DOI setting guidelines for repayment and further issuing public statements expressing dismay that those guidelines are being ignored? Seems to me that if the claims of Piquant LLC were true that they were legally scot-free, the DOI would be saying something that, you know, sort of closely resembled that, rather than publicizing the terms of repayment.

Perhaps the reason that Piquant is defying the DOI’s order is that they simply don’t have the money to make the payment. Which would certainly make sense if they can’t afford to pay their staffers, as Brian Maloney theorizes today. Yuck.

At this point, I am ready to offer a bold prediction. A la Eason Jordan, the first mention of this story we will find in the New York Times is when Air America actually folds under - yet again placing the MSM in the unenviable position of reporting the “shocking” conclusion to a story that they have studiously ignored. I can almost feel pity for them.

Almost.

At RedState, NotSoBlueStater comments:

When the Swift Boats Veterans for Truth started getting some traction with their accusations against Kerry, the NY Times immediately sent two top reporters to Texas to try to link their funding back to the Bush campaign. After a week of digging, The Times produced a lengthy expose and a fancy chart that basically proved that Texas Republicans historically help each other get elected.

The horror.

The dollar amount of the donation in question was $250,000. The dollar amount in the Air America scandal is almost $900k.

I’d say that if a legal $250k donation justifies sending two reporters halfway across the country for a week, $900k of embezzled funds in your own city probably justifies one reporter for a half day.

But that’s just me…

Lance at Red State Rant weighs in on the loan repayment schedule and the Fairness Doctrine.

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