Two days ago, Salon broke the story that Dr. Tom Coburn, the GOP candidate for US Senate here in Oklahoma, surgically sterilized a young woman without her written consent, and didn't document it in Medicaid paperwork because Medicaid wouldn't pay for it. The woman sued Coburn for malpractice but lost the suit when she "inexplicably" didn't show up to testify.

Today, two days later, you'd think this would be a big deal. I searched Google News to see how far and wide the press had carried the story.

I found six entries. The New York Times and the Washington Post reported on the allegations, with the Post focusing on the more hot-button issue of fraud. (The woman had apparently asked Coburn to sterilize her after two earlier unwanted pregnancies, but Coburn refused because she was too young and Medicaid wouldn't pay for it. She had emergency surgery due to an ectopic pregnancy, and while Coburn was operating to remove the fallopian tube with the fetus in it, he removed the other one as well, sterilizing her. He then did not tell Medicaid about it, and told the patient not to tell anyone either.) The Canton (OH) Repository reprints the Post article. With the original Salon reference, that's four of the six articles - and none from Oklahoma media so far.

The other two? KOCO-TV, the Oklahoma City ABC affiliate (owned by Hearst-Argyle Television), and KTOK radio (Oklahoma City winger hate-radio - Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, and more), both reporting on Coburn's response to the charges.

No, seriously. The only local coverage in Oklahoma City that the GOP Senate candidate, a pro-life doctor, sterilized an emotionally-fragile woman without her written consent and was sued over it, is of that doctor ranting about how it's "dirty politics" and how the Democrats were responsible for it all. That's right - apparently Democrats took over his mind in that operating room and made him stop that poor girl from having babies forever.

How about NewsOK.com, the state's largest news site, run by The Oklahoman and KWTV 9, the Oklahoma City CBS affiliate? Nothing. The only story with Coburn's name in it that they printed the day after the allegations was that Brad Carson had pulled ahead in a new poll about the Senate race. KOCO-TV said that Carson's campaign sent them the Salon story, but Carson's site does not link to it.

If you out-of-staters wonder how Oklahoma can elect such obviously incompetent people as Coburn and Jim Inhofe, this is why: the local media absolutely ignores any negative stories about GOP politicians, or portrays them as dirty Democratic tricks. If the local TV stations had video they had shot themselves of Coburn jumping up and down on a baby, they'd report it was some kind of Democratic mind-control trick.

On his new weblog, pointing out how every time Kitty Kelley is on TV about her new book, she gets asked the same hyper-specific, skeptical questions:

For years they've been hyping and peddling every variety of fishy speculation and brazen assertion about the Clintons, Vince Foster, Monica, Gary Condit-Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson, this rape case, that abduction case; they've rolled out the ratty carpet for every Swift Boat slob; and now, now, they decide to get loftily anal.

I would love to see side-by-side comparisons of any cable TV interviewer talking to Kelley, and the same interviewer talking to a "Swift Boat Veteran for Truth," if for no other reason than to sell more copies of Eric Alterman's book. (Yeah, I should buy one myself, I know...)