There’s a story that’s really big on the Internet right now but is nowhere to be found in the mainstream media. This isn’t surprising, because it’s a story some really sleazy and non-journalistic activity by a mainstream media outlet.

The Joe Miller campaign in Alaska says it has a tape of members of the news staff of CBS affiliate KTVA in Anchorage plotting to create some kind of embarrassing incident at a Miller rally. Miller, as you may know, won the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski is running as a write-in candidate in Tuesday’s election.

According to Joe Miller’s campaign, a voice mail left by reporters from KTVA, the CBS affiliate in Anchorage, went longer than intended and ended up capturing some embarrassing conversation. Much like Jerry Brown’s voicemail to a police union chief, the recording apparently resulted from a failure to properly disconnect the call, and two people can be heard to strategize coverage of an upcoming Joe Miller rally to look for a child molester they could feature later.

Here is an excerpt from the tape. Keep in mind that this is an allegation, and that no one from KTVA is identified on the tape. However, also keep in mind that making a false charge like this on the eve of an election would not be in the Miller campaign’s interest, to say the least:

FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.

Here’s the recording:

Whether this is an actual tape of the KTVA news team or not, even a layman knows this is a news story. I checked the KTVA website just now and it doesn’t mention this controversy. I also checked the Anchorage Daily News website and it, too, makes no mention.

It should be pointed out that both of these news outlets have been ant-Miller and anti-Palin in the past months, though I’m sure they would claim they are just being objective. Those protestations have rung hollow, and will even more so if this recording turns out to be what the Miller campaign claims it to be.

As a newsman, the fact that the two major news outlets in Alaska, the state’s major daily and the state’s CBS news outlet, would ignore this story says volumes. News is news. And if you’re a legitimate news outlet you print or broadcast the news, no matter whose ox it gores. That is, unless you have a bias.

If a political candidate made a charge against you, as a journalist, that calls into question your very integrity as a journalist, wouldn’t you react quickly and strongly with a denial and an outraged statement? That is not what KTVA has done, at least not yet.

As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds said this morning: “Funny, there was a time when I would have found this inherently unlikely. Has the press changed, or is it just easier to get caught now?”

My view is that, yes, it’s easier to get caught now, but, also, the media has changed dramatically since I first signed on in 1971. We were all liberals back then, even at my medium-sized daily in Georgia, but we would never have thought of manufacturing an embarrassing moment for a candidate with whom we disagreed.

I think Sarah Palin summed it up best on Fox News this morning. She called them “corrupt bastards” (that part starts a 2:30 of the video below):

If you check Google News for KTVA you will not find (as of noon, Sunday, Oct. 31) a story on this in any mainstream media, only conservative blogs and news sites. As Ed Morrissey said on HotAir today: “If they don’t respond to me or anyone else, that will tell us something about the allegations, too.”

Can’t wait to see what happens.

UPDATE: KTVA has responded. They say essentially, yeah, that was us, but you’re misinterpreting what happened. They claim they were in a meeting discussing “what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.” Sure. Read the transcript above to see if that sounds plausible.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and is publisher of its newspaper Carolina Journal.