When NASA's imaging experts deliver astonishing images of far-off planets, the mainstream media can't rush them to print quickly enough.

But when one of those same NASA imaging experts - Robert Nelson - revealed an unmistakable bulge in the back of George W. Bush during the debates, the mainstream media was terrified to report the truth.

NASA Scientist Detects Bush Wire; Press Yawns
by Dave Lindorff

First, Nelson, who lives and works in Pasadena, offered his story to the local daily, the Pasadena Star News. Such a big story by a Cal Tech/JPL scientist would seem a shoe-in for page-one play in his local daily, but he says the conservative paper's editors shot him down. Likewise the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, from his hometown in Pennsylvania-the second place he offered the story to.

Deciding he might have better luck with the major media, which he assumed might be less tainted by politics, Nelson tried the nearby Los Angeles Times. No luck. Although he sent his photos to the paper's editors, he says they "sat on them for four days" and never returned his phone call.

Nelson had better luck, at least initially, with the New York Times. Several reporters there took an interest, he says, "and they promised a story which was ready to go last Thursday, when it was yanked at the last minute by higher ups." My calls to the reporters who were working the story, Bill Broad and Andy Revkin, went unanswered, as did a phone call and an email to the Times' ombudsman, Daniel Okrent [public@nytimes.com].

Finally, Nelson says he offered his photos of the first debate to the Washington Post. Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward (he of Watergate investigative reporting fame), actually personally called him back, Nelson says. "He said it would take too long for him to clear these images with his editors and he encouraged me to go to Salon."