One of my least favorite media criticism dodges revolves around the idea that, though TV and newspaper pundits are powerful opinion leaders with massive megaphones through which they can amplify any point of view they choose, they are simultaneously powerless to resist the tastes of the public and must slavishly follow the directions of their reader and viewer masters.

My major question about today’s arrest in the actual bomb placement at the Spokane, Washington, Martin Luther King Day parade is this: how will America’s media cover the arrest of a non-Muslim motivated by white supremacy who actually placed an operational bomb in a clear hate crime?