The silence from big media on the U.N. Oil For Food scandal is deafening.

From Jay Reding:

Compare the silence on the UN scandal with the cacophany of stories on Enron, WorldCom, and Martha Stewart. There is a clear double standard at play here. When a corrupt CEO loses billions of dollars, it's all over the news for weeks. When a member of the UN does it, it's as though it never happened.

There are a few reasons for this. The first, and most obvious reason is that the UN is a sacred cow among liberals in the media. Investigating a UN scandal is not something a mainstream journalist would do - it wouldn't be healthy for their career. The liberal mindset of the media has placed a different standard of burden upon the UN than for a corporation. The groupthink is that corporations are bad and the UN is good - and the differential reporting between UNSCAM and the Enron/WorldCom/Stewart trial makes this clear. Fortunately there are real journalists like Claudia Rosett (who has another in-depth investigatory piece on UNSCAM today) who are willing to follow this story.

However, there's a less ideological reason as well. The US media doesn't care much for things that don't involve A Americans and B celebrities. Therefore, Martha Stewart is much more "newsworthy" than Kofi Annan, even though Kofi Annan's financial misdoings helped fund terrorism while Martha Stewart's helped fund handicrafts and yacht builders. The media cares far more about things that happen to celebrities than it does about matters of consequence - celebrities bring in the ratings, while UN scandals don't.

Still curious as to why Kofi Annan and certain members of the international community didn't want to liberate Iraq? You shouldn't be.

Remember, Kerry wants to bring the UN in to help stabilize Iraq. I think the UN has proven that they're not up to the task.