Believe it or not, none of the largest national newspapers put an article on Wednesday’s IRS hearings on the front page. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had a picture of Lois Lerner, but sent the reader to an inside page for the story. The New York Times and USA Today offered no picture, either.
USA Today has an excuse: it put Lerner taking the Fifth on Wednesday’s front page in a preview. But The New York Times only put this taxpayer scandal on Page One: “Europe Pushes to Shed Stigma Of a Tax Haven.” Oh, heavens forbid. Andrew Higgins championed a “sweeping global assault on tax evasion,” starting in Luxembourg.
“From the rain-swept avenues of Luxembourg’s capital to the sun-spangled lagoons of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, the authorities are scrambling to shed the stigma of enabling tax cheats and to figure out how to change their secretive ways without driving way lucrative foreign clients.”
The Times stuck their Lerner Takes the Fifth story back, back, back on page A-17. At least the Journal put the Islamist cleaver-hacking death in London on the front page, while the Times stuck that on A-7. The Journal put their Lerner story on A-6.
The Times also signaled their sympathies for the taxman with a “Washington Memo” by Michael Shear on the front of the Business section titled “Torches and Pitchforks for IRS but Cheers for Apple.” Yes, “One thing became clear this week on Capitol Hill. It is better to be a tax dodger than a tax collector.”
