On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency committed an act which would have likely become instant national news if a private entity had done the same thing.

On Friday, John Merline at Investors' Business Daily succinctly noted that the EPA "dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado, turning it into what looked like Tang, forcing the sheriff's office to close the river to recreational users." Oh, and it "also failed to warn officials in downstream New Mexico about the spill." Yet here we are four days later, and the story has gotten very little visibility outside of center-right blogs and outlets. That's largely explained by how the wire services have handled the story. After the jump, readers will see headlines and descriptions of the stories which have appeared thus far at the web site of the New York Times:

In a Tuesday night segment on Colorado’s Senate race on the PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill spurred liberal Sen. Mark Udall to trash the left-leaning Denver Post for endorsing his Republican opponent Cory Gardner for being Johnny One-Note on abortion.

Ifill said “Udall shrugs off the hometown rebuke.” He complained: “If the Denver Post doesn’t think women’s reproductive rights are important, that’s their decision, but that’s an important part of my campaign.”

On Friday's CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King promoted protests in Colorado designed to silence local school board members who were considering whether to have a discussion about possibly changing the history education curriculum to reflect a more positive view of the United States: "High school students outside Denver promise more protests today against the Jefferson County School Board. The panel refuses to drop a controversial plan reassessing how the district teaches American history."

In the report that followed, correspondent Anna Werner hyped "an incredibly contentious meeting" of the school board where "Audience members called for the board's three conservative members to resign after they voted in favor of curriculum review." The headline on screen throughout the segment read: "Censoring History? School Board Votes to Review Lessons Amid Outrage." [Listen to the audio]

James Hohmann of Politico reported on a "nearly million-dollar" ad buy by Planned Parenthood against two Republican Senate challengers who are "taking heat for their strident opposition to abortion."

It's apparently not "strident" when the Democratic incumbents they're challenging get 100-percent ratings from the "pro-choice" crowd.

While NBC eagerly touted Colorado legalizing marijuana at the start of the year, even promoting one Denver store that hoped to become the "Costco of weed," on Monday's Today, correspondent Miguel Almaguer finally noticed a downside to legalized drug use: "More than half of Colorado's 61 arrests made in January for impaired driving involved someone who was high." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

NBC joins ABC and CBS in belatedly covering the negative consequences of legalizing pot after initially promoting the move. CBS This Morning hyped Colorado's "marijuana munchies" before discovering pot contaminated with mildew and e-coli. ABC's World News proclaimed an "historic" "pot revolution" in the state before reporting on the legal marijuana trade becoming a popular target for criminals.