The first story is obvious if you watched any non-Fox news yesterday or read any news online:

Grand jury indicts leader behind Planned Parenthood videos

That's the headline found on many of the 6,000+ morning news sources that carried an AP report that begins:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Houston grand jury investigating undercover footage of Planned Parenthood found no wrongdoing Monday by the abortion provider, and instead indicted anti-abortion activists involved in making the videos that targeted the handling of fetal tissue in clinics and provoked outrage among Republican leaders nationwide.

David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs. Another activist, Sandra Merritt, was also indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Has the Intelligencer been covering Planned Parenthood? Of course they have. If you go to the Intelligencer's/News-Register's website and search "Planned Parenthood," you'll find a significant list of stories, editorials, and columns starting with the first doctored video released by the Center for Medical Progress in July.

This story broke yesterday afternoon and yet there was no coverage in the morning paper. Is there any good reason why this story wasn't covered? I can't think of any -- imagine the headline, story, and eventual editorial you would have seen had officials from Planned Parenthood been indicted.

My previous post noted that our local "newspapers" often place coal companies, their profits, and their bonuses to executives over the safety, welfare, and future well-being of the miners. Yesterday the Mine Safety and Health Administration won an important court decision concerning coal dust and black lung disease that was opposed by coal operators and this is the second story that went unreported in the morning"newspaper." As the Charleston Gazette and Mail reported:

A federal appeals court has rejected coal industry challenges to a landmark Obama administration rule aimed at reducing miners’ exposure to coal dust that causes deadly black lung disease.

The ruling by a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes just weeks after some mine operators had asked the court for an emergency order to block the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s continued implementation of the latest phase of the agency rule.

“This is indeed a good day for coal miners,” said MSHA chief Joe Main. “For years, MSHA worked hard to craft a balanced rule that would allow miners to stay healthy and businesses to continue to operate.”

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you can probably guess the name of at least one of the mine operators who tried to block MSHA implementation:

The rule had been challenged by, among others, Murray Energy and the National Mining Association.

In a statement, Murray Energy said that it was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling and would ask the appeals court to reconsider “in order to see this illegal and destructive rule, which does nothing for our miners’ health, completely invalidated.”

We may eventually see another version of this story once it's been cleared for publication and given the proper spin.

A third missed story is about "demand response." I wrote about it here last October as WV Attorney General Morrisey joined twelve other state attorney generals in a lawsuit against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, ruled against Morrisey and the other state AGs. As the Associated Press describes:

The justices ruled 6-2 that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had the authority to issue regulations aimed at conserving energy and preventing blackouts.

Supporters of the plan say it has saved billions in energy costs, improved reliability of the power grid and reduced air pollution since it was put in place in 2011. A coalition of utility companies, which have lost millions of dollars in profits under the rule, argued it was too generous and trampled state rights over retail electricity sales.

I believe that the Intelligencer ignored the story because the saved billions apparently came from alternative energy sources rather than the use of coal. (For the Intelligencer, "affordable electricity" can only come from the continued use of coal.) Additionally, since Morrisey is one of their favorites, the local papers doesn't criticize his won/loss record in court cases which rivals District Attorney Hamilton Burger on the old Perry Mason TV series in ineptitude.

NOTE -- As I finished putting this together, I notice that the afternoon News-Register did manage to publish a shortened version of this AP story about the Planned Parent video on page 6.