The biggest story of last week was one the mainstream media did not want to cover. Last week, a federal grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on 11 counts related to their decades-long scheme of bankrolling leading figures of white supremacist extremist groups through shell corporations under the guise of paying “informants.” The bombshell was certainly newsworthy, but media outlets that self-identify as news organizations treated the damaging revelations about the Left’s favorite attack dog as if they had been asked to pick up its droppings.

“From following mainstream press coverage,” described National Review’s Becket Adams, “you’d know mostly that a supposedly noble and esteemed anti-racist group is tied up somehow in Trump administration chicanery.” In its sole story on the affair, NBC News made sure to inform readers in the subtitle that the SPLC was “outraged by the false allegations.”

USA Today, meanwhile, tried to absolve the SPLC of wrongdoing in the headline itself, running articles titled, “FBI: SPLC paid informants without donors knowing. Feds pay them too,” and “From fighting Klan, neo-Nazis to federal charges: What’s next for SPLC?”

“This defense is insane,” countered Daily Signal Senior Editor Tyler O’Neil, who literally wrote the book on the SPLC’s misbehavior, on “Washington Watch.” “By the plain text of the indictment, this is something other than your traditional informant process, and … the Southern Poverty Law Center is not a law enforcement entity. This is not the same thing as when the FBI has informants.”

For its part, CNN had no sooner mentioned the “nearly a dozen counts” in general terms before it hurried on to assure readers that the SPLC “informant” program was “now defunct” and that the SPLC had “denied any wrongdoing,” without noticing the evident dissonance between these defenses. In a follow-up piece, it tried to pick apart the indictment, arguing that it “offered few details of how donor money that paid the informants was used to further the groups’ violent interests.”

Over at The New York Times, Adams suggested editors were “experimenting with the idea of a headline that says nothing at all,” after theirs read, “Justice Dept. Charges Prominent Civil Rights Group With Financial Crimes.” Said Adams, “One can’t help but wonder why the paper chose to omit the objectively newsworthy allegation that the anti-hate group bankrolled Klan members.”

Finally, NPR didn’t even bother to assign their own reporter; they merely borrowed a story from the Associated Press. Axios appeared to ignore the story altogether.

This suggests another side to the story: not every media outlet devoted such careful inattention to the bombshell indictment. The AP and ABC News provided decent reporting, while The Washington Post has now run at least five stories on the controversy. Alas, that such demonstrations of basic journalistic competence merit recognition only serves as further condemnation of those outlets that deliberately missed the plot.

Indeed, the basic problem with the mainstream media’s coverage is that they obsessed over tangential aspects like who said what, while glossing over the main fact: that the SPLC was paying large sums of money to people who not only infiltrated extremist groups, but were even high-ranking leaders in those groups. “In some cases, they were paying the very same people who they had extremist files on their website on,” protested O’Neil. “They’re paying the very people that they’re citing as evidence of hate.”

“Not only did the SPLC cop to paying members of the KKK and the Aryan Nations,” O’Neil continued, “but the indictment shows that they created shell companies … lied to banks to conceal those shell companies, and used those shell companies to funnel money to these so-called ‘informants.’ Then, according to the indictment, they used these informants to essentially prop up hate to convince donors that America was more hateful than it already is, which is the SPLC’s M.O.”

“If you wanted a clearer justification and vindication of” the thesis that “the SPLC props up hate, exaggerates hate in order to scare donors into ponying up cash, you couldn’t have gotten perhaps a better clear statement,” O’Neil argued.

“It does not speak well of the SPLC’s claimed innocence that news organizations have responded to Washington’s claims with the sort of full-court public relations effort that conspicuously ignores or mischaracterizes the most damning allegations,” Adams reflected. “It suggests a lack of confidence.”

Perhaps the lack of confidence is due to the fact that, deep down, even the SPLC’s political allies understand it is most likely rotten within. “This is a nonprofit that has offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands. This is a nonprofit that unionized and had its union accuse the nonprofit of union-busting. And it’s a nonprofit that had racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandals that led them to fire their own co-founder,” O’Neil listed. “So, this couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people,” he added, tongue-in-cheek.

O’Neil granted that “some of the charges are going to be difficult to prove in a court of law.” For instance, “a judge might not look favorably on the government's way of interpreting how that wire fraud works.” However, he added, “this made it past a grand jury, so there had to have been at least probable cause.” Adams added, “Whether the charges are overblown or not, it shouldn’t prevent newsrooms from simply reporting the news, but it has been like pulling teeth trying to find the facts of this story.”

Nothing resets the news cycle like an attempted presidential assassination, and the mainstream media is surely grateful for an excuse to forsake what might be their least favorite news story of the year. But the news cycle’s relentless pressure does not absolve the SPLC of wrongdoing, nor can it excuse news organizations for refusing to adequately cover the news at the proper time.

In fact, the SPLC remains relevant to the conversation surrounding the presidential assassination attempt. Their determination to label mainstream conservative organizations as “hate groups” has incited violence against conservatives. The gunman who attacked Family Research Council in 2012 told investigators he was motivated by the SPLC hate map, and the assassination of TPUSA Founder Charlie Kirk occurred shortly after the SPLC added his organization to the hate map.

Indeed, the circle of those who credit SPLC and those who wish Trump dead has substantial overlap. As just one example, the Wisconsin brewery that promised free beer on the day Trump dies “in a few months” has also invoked the SPLC’s hate group labels to disparage school board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty.

In a sit-down with “60 Minutes” after the latest assassination attempt, Trump challenged the program, “One of your ‘60 Minute’ episodes … should be on Southern [Poverty] Law [Center] and the fact that they spent millions and millions of dollars on absolute far-right, and just bad, bad groups.” They’ll get on that, right after they turn the moon blue.

The best thing that can be said for the media’s skewed coverage of the SPLC’s exposure is that they aren’t the organization’s most shameless defenders. That award goes, as might be expected, to politicians like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“Let’s be clear what this case … is really about,” Schumer said from the Senate floor. “It has nothing to do with alleged wire fraud, or with the Southern Poverty Law Center somehow working in coordination with the KKK. That’s ridiculous on its face. It doesn’t pass the laugh test. It’s about Donald Trump turning the Department of Justice into the Department of Vengeance, his own attack dog.”

Schumer is partly right and partly wrong. It is ridiculous for the SPLC to be propping up extremist groups — and, according to the indictment, true. It doesn’t pass the laugh test, but that’s because it’s far too serious to be a joke.

“It actually is the SPLC’s M.O.,” O’Neil responded to Schumer’s bluster. “They put hundreds of Moms for Liberty chapters on the ‘hate map’ in order to scare donors, to say, ‘Oh, look, we’re still in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Hate is on the march. We have to oppose hate by any means possible. Give your gift today.’”

“This is beyond a scandal. It’s a tremendous black mark on the Southern Poverty Law Center,” O’Neil concluded. So “these Democrats are covering themselves in shame by their response to this.”

“By all means, Chuck Schumer, you can embarrass yourself further,” he warned. “But I think, for those of us who know what happened in the last four years, for those of us who know how corrupt the Southern Poverty Law Center is, we’re going to remember that you stuck your neck out for them, and you’re going to be hoisted by your own petard when this case continues. Because this is just the beginning.”