In a 17-day period two months ago, the two Wheeling “newspapers” carried 23 articles that mentioned John Conyers, a Democratic African-American congressman from Michigan. (See here.) In the same period, there were three editorials that dealt only with Conyers. Both the articles and editorials dealt with the harassment charges against Conyers as well as his use of government funds to settle them. When similar charges were later brought against four additional congressmen, only one received any coverage and there was no editorial response from either newspaper about any of them.

Earlier this week, the New York Times broke a story about Representative Patrick Meehan (R-Pa) and his sexual harassment of an aide. (Here's the original.) Meehan, like Conyers, made the charges go away by using government funds. Making the story even more interesting was that Meehan was on the House Ethics Committee. The story was picked-up by numerous news sources yesterday and today, but the Wheeling newspapers were not among them. Congressional sexual harassment, as the locals apparently see it, is only practiced by Democratic congressmen.

I was a bit surprised that one of papers didn’t focus on Meehan’s reason/excuse for his action:

Meehan denied that he retaliated against her and instead blamed any negative behavior on stress over the Republican effort to dismantle Affordable Care Act. On the day Meehan penned the letter to his aide, the House voted to partially repeal and replace the health care law.

As our papers so like to do, Meehan affixed blame to Obama and in this case, his signature accomplishment. Yes, everything is Obama’s fault.

Update - January 26

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Meehan has decided not to seek re-election:

A Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who settled a former aide's sexual harassment complaint with taxpayer money informed party and campaign officials Thursday that he will not seek re-election, a decision that came as party officials had begun to search for a replacement candidate.

The Wheeling papers continue to ignore the story -- the last reference I could find to Patrick Meehan is dated April 29.