NBC has a fairly lengthy article on its website about Senator Bob Menendez’s trips to the Dominican Republic. The story is about how he flew on his good friend and political donor’s private jet without paying for the trips, which is an ethics violation. Nowhere in the report are the words “underage,” “prostitute,” or “hooker.” The first time any of those words come up in searches of the page are in the comments.

So, this is what NBC didn’t report:

There is nothing in mere politics than can equal the power of a sex scandal to make people pay attention.

And dude: Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee? It’s almost as good as a sex scandal with a congressman named Weiner.

So, how did the Senator — who was all about empowering women and youth — like his hookers? Of course, he liked ‘em young and fresh:

“In a little-noticed email published online Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a young Dominican woman wrote nine months ago that she slept with 59-year-old New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez at a series of sex parties organized by Dr. Salomon Melgen, a longtime Menendez campaign donor.
“That Senator also likes the youngest and newest girls,” the woman wrote on April 21, 2002, according to an English translation provided to The Daily Caller by a native Spanish speaker.”

Could anything possibly be more newsworthy than that? How about the Senator’s (allegedly) exotic tastes for foreign women?

Read the whole thing.

It isn’t like NBC is unaware of the prostitution allegations, seeing that they have two other articles on Menendez and his denial of the charges. One is from Reuters, and one is from the AP. So they knew about it, and chose to leave it out of their own report.

Can you say “fail”?