[W]e've been struck by this recent spate of headlines: "Lott Often Opposed Measures Identified with Civil Rights" (New York Times). "Lott Has Moved Little on Civil Rights Issues" (Washington Post). "Lott's Remarks Bring Scrutiny to his Ties to Segregationists" (USA Today.) Every one of these stories could have been written at any time in the past several years. They're almost entirely based on Trent Lott's public record – his repeated opposition to civil rights measures, his past support for Bob Jones University, his lone Senate vote against a black judge last year, his association with a white supremacist group. And yet, by and large, these stories were not written. Why not?

Why did it take a dumb remark about Thurmond to force reporters to take stock of Lott's record – a record that, many on the right are now saying, renders him a poor symbol of the new Republican Party?

When Lott was elected the Senate's GOP leader in 1996, most of the stories dwelled on how he was more conservative than Bob Dole. Not a word about his position on racial issues in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post or USA Today. The New York Times carried this sentence: "He has cast several votes – against an extension of the Voting Rights Act, for instance, or establishment of a holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – that have antagonized black groups." It was in the 19th paragraph.

Is it because reporters don't like to crawl out on a limb and "make an issue" out of someone's record if no one in the political world is doing so? If so, such an approach has the effect of making the media a captive of the political establishment.