It's not often that a writer rocks the political world by comparing himself to a spotted owl. But that's what happened when Warren Buffett produced his now-famous "tax me more" op-ed piece in the August 14 New York Times.

Buffett complained that Congress treats him and his mega-rich peers as if they were an endangered species like the spotted owl, by allowing them to pay lower taxes than ordinary Americans. He wrote that in 2010, he handed over $6,938,744 to Uncle Sam, which "was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office."

To rectify this imbalance, Buffett proposed raising rates "immediately" on the approximately 240,000 households that make more than $1 million and raising them even more on the 8,000 or so households that make more than $10 million.

His idea took off like a rocket among congressional Democrats, who promptly began pushing for a 5.6 percent surtax on anyone making at least seven figures a year. President Obama jumped in by calling it the "Buffett tax," in an attempt to popularize his jobs plan.

In the article, Buffett said he and most of the super-wealthy people he knows would love to pay more. Of course, he didn't mention any of them by name; nor did he explain why they didn’t just write bigger checks to the IRS on their own. (Though there's no line on federal tax forms providing for additional voluntary tax payments, there's nothing preventing them.)

Buffett also refrained from mentioning the fact that Berkshire Hathaway, the company he heads, has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with the IRS involving its tax returns for every year from 2002 through 2009. According to the firm's own 2010 annual report, , the amount in question is about one billion dollars, which Berkshire Hathaway has refused to pay for "adjustments proposed by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service."

This discomfiting angle originated, we believe, in the conservative magazine Human Events and quickly went viral on the Internet ... Googling the search term "Berkshire Hathaway tax dispute" produced an impressive 2,160,000 results.

While the blogosphere devoted intense attention to this question, how did the traditional media respond?  To find out, we searched Lexis-Nexis for newspaper and television stories from the Aug. 14 date of Buffit’s op-ed  to Oct. 19, which mentioned both his tax proposal and his company's dispute with the IRS.

And the answer is, there were no such stories during the more than two month period we examined. That's no stories as in NO STORIES.

Among the 288 pieces we found discussing Buffett's proposal, 279 did so without mention of his company’s tax dispute. The other nine were commentary items ... namely, an editorial in the New York Post and several FoxNews Channel talk show transcripts ... that delved into both issues simultaneously. But no straight news stories.

We can only speculate about the reason for the mainstream media’s silence on the Berkshire Hathawy tax dispute angle.. Of course, a billionaire’s plea to “tax me more” is a classic man-bites-dog story. And reporters seem comfortable with the image of the gentle, crinkly Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha who has always seemed above the tawdry fray of commerce in amassing his fortune. They generally treat him with kindness and seldom view his statements with the skepticism they normally devote to policy proposals coming from businessmen. And he has returned the favor, making himself highly accessible to the media through the years: He owns the Buffalo News, has sat on the board of the Washington Post and, of course, just had a byline in the New York Times.

By contrast, the notion of a  tightfisted, curmudgeonly Warren Buffett who surrounds himself with an army of attorneys and accountants to fight the IRS to the nth degree on his company’s tax liability doesn't mesh too well with his media-friendly image.

Perhaps Buffett could explain the contrast in his demeanors of being tender-hearted about his personal taxes but playing tough guy on his business taxes. Presumably he could provide a perfectly convincing explanation. But we'll never know, because the mainstream media never bothered to ask him.

(CMPA's Dan Amundson was the researcher for this article.)