A viral video investigation by a young, independent journalist has ignited national outrage over Minnesota’s alleged fraud scandal, providing clear, visual evidence that strongly suggests that Somali-owned businesses have been bilking federal funds on a massive scale. Now critics are asking why has the state’s leading newspaper remained virtually silent.

Already, the national media is taking heat. A recent study from the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters uncovered that many of the national news outlets have barely reported on the latest developments after independent journalist Nick Shirley released an exposé on YouTube and X that has garnered more than 100 million views and impressions. 

Both ABC and NBC spent a combined 17 minutes through Monday morning on covering the latest developments on the Somali Community in Minneapolis with only 21 percent of that coverage focusing on the welfare fraud scheme. 

But the coverage was most noticeably absent from the home page of the state’s largest newspaper, the Minnesota Star Tribune, long the voice of the state’s business and political establishment. Over the weekend, while Mr. Shirley’s report was dominating social media, the Star Tribune’s homepage featured stories on its own printing plant shutting down, a local student in St. Paul and his advocacy for native culture, a winter storm bringing blizzard conditions to the Twin Cities and Governor Tim Walz’s innovative use of social media influencers. 

Conservatives have taken to social media, alleging that the newspaper is intentionally keeping quiet on the scandal, due to its CEO Steve Grove, a longtime supporter of Governor Tim Walz and former commissioner of employment and economic development before joining the Star Tribune in April of 2023.

“Steve Grove, the Star Tribune CEO and supporter of Tim Walz, has stayed dead silent as Minnesota’s biggest fraud story goes viral,” conservative commentator Mario Nawfal said on X. “It wasn’t the media or state auditors who exposed it – it was a guy with a camera and public records driving through Minnesota.”

“While X uncovers fraud in real time, Grove’s newsroom hasn’t published a single word.”

A spokesman with the Star Tribune said to the New York Sun in a statement that its newsroom operates independently of executive influence.

“The journalism of the Minnesota Star Tribune’s independent newsroom is not directed by its publisher or owner,” newspaper spokesman Chris Iles said. “The notion that the Minnesota Star Tribune is downplaying the fraud crisis is contradicted by a simple Google search. The newsroom has written nearly 300 articles on the subject, filed dozens of public information requests, and broken countless stories that hold state leaders accountable for this massive theft of taxpayer money.”

“This is the sort of independent, fact-based reporting Minnesotans expect and deserve, and we intend to continue,” he also said in his statement.

A search of the Star Tribune homepage on Monday showed that the coverage is still non-existent, with only one story buried further down among the headlines focusing on the original article by City Journal that played a major role breaking the scandal wide open with claims by one source who said their reporting was erroneous. 

Media critic and American Compass managing editor Drew Holden, recently posted a lengthy thread on X that highlighted the Star Tribune’s lackluster coverage of the scandal along with shoddy coverage from national outlets like CNN.

“The legacy media didn’t miss the Minnesota Somalian fraud story. They actively dismissed it as made up, racist, or xenophobic,” Mr. Holden wrote at the start of his thread. “But no outlet was worse than Minneapolis’s hometown paper, @StarTribune,” He wrote in a subsequent post along with links to the paper’s original coverage. 

“Perhaps it’s time to revisit this story? Seems the evidence is pretty clear now.”