I’ve been looking at the parallels between the frauds perpetrated by pro-gun academic John Lott and his anti-gun counterpart Michael Bellesiles. But there’s an equally interesting parallel between the cases of John Lott and Trent Lott. Both acted in an indefensible fashion, and no-one seriously tried to defend them. Rather, the establishment media made a collective decision that Trent Lott’s pro-segregationist comments were ‘not news’. It was only sustained pressure from bloggers that made them change tack, with first a trickle and then a torrent of print and electronic media commentators piling on to demand Lott’s resignation .

In the John Lott case, the roles are reversed. The blogging establishment, as represented by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit covered the topic reasonably fairly until Lott’s defence case started to fall apart with the exposure of the Mary Rosh sock puppet and the shyster antics of Lott’s chief defence witness David Gross. From then on, the topic was dropped like a dead fish. Reynolds even used the exact words of the old media establishment “not news”.

Unsurprisingly, the old media did not share the view that a prominent and controversial academic posing as a former student of the opposite gender and writing glowing testimonials for himself was ‘not news’. They haven’t yet managed to get up to speed with Lott’s putative survey but they are already well ahead of the blogging establishment on this one.

Sad to say, the blogosphere’s self-congratulation after the Trent Lott affair has proved premature. With a few honourable exceptions (notably Julian Sanchez and Michelle Malkin), the dominant group of pro-gun libertarians have proved just as keen on self-censorship as the established media. Reynolds has already settled nicely into the role of Howell Raines at the NYT, and his ukases on what is and isn’t news seem to be just as effectively enforced.

The claim that Reynolds tends to wimp out by declaring a debate closed as soon as he sees that he’s losing has been made quite often, but is hard to prove – after all one blogger can only cover so many issues in one day. But the Lott/Rosh case is about as clear-cut as I can imagine. Meet the new media boss, same as the old media boss!