A fellow Dextra blog, “Electric City Weblog” (ECW) has a must read article on his blog called, “This explains an awful lot.”

Gregg Smith of the ECW has written the article, and it should be read by all those who believe there should be more fairness in the Montana media’s reporting about candidates and officials on the left.

Many of my fellow Dextra Bloggers have written about the poor and shoddy work done by the Montana newspapers, the Associated Press, and other news sources in Montana over the last few years. (You can see a list of the latest posts written by Dextra Bloggers on the left side of the screen, under DextraMontana.)

We saw the beginning of the garbage from the Montana media in 2006. They routinely reported on stories that appeared to have been ripped from the press releases of the Montana Democratic Party and the Tester for Senate Campaign, and instead of investigating these rumors, they cited unnamed sources and sources close to the investigation. They asked very few questions. They basically convicted people before the facts came out. They did little investigating, and it appears they copied and pasted lines from press releases issued by the Montana Democrats and Tester’s campaign. They felt it was easier to sit on one’s butt instead of getting out and performing the work of a real journalist.

Now here we are in 2008. There are many issues with Montana’s Governor that need some sunlight on them, but they are getting little, if any, coverage in the local newspapers or on local television news.

The fact is if Schweitzer was running as a Republican, the Montana media would be barbecuing him for dinner.

Luckily, the information about the Governor’s deeds are getting out due to the DextraMontana folks little by little. The DextraMontana folks have written about the possible tampering with the 2006 U.S. Senate election, to the issues surrounding his Public Service Announcement done with taxpayer equipment and state employees, to his senior counsel’s contacts with the Commissioner of Political Practices, not to mention the senior counsel’s status as a lawyer.

As Smith wrote, “We’ve already done the work for you.”