This _could_ happen. Someone first writes the caption as "Eliot Spitzer (R), blah blah blah," not mentioning the wife. Then someone comes back later and says "Gotta say that's his wife" and adds that part, not really paying attention to the earlier (R), and inadvertently leaving it in.

Excuses excuses....that's all you ever hear from the left.

Talk about obvious intentional obfuscation....here is a great article, the only person with named party affiliation is a republican.

I was mad as heck...BTW, I haven't heard a word about any of this in the msm to-boot, if any of this was reversed it would of been news.

weather or not that the 'wife' was mentioned, correct caption would still identify the position of the person being spoken of.

although, i believe that the 'r' should have been lower case.

So why wasn't there a (L) after identifying the person on the left's name?

Told yinz it was innocent and not media bias.

I am flattered Reuters reads Newsbusters and collects excuses from us...

I should demand some sort of compensation.

I've tried the link and it's dead. Maybe they're fixing it.

Here's the response from Reuters' Vincent Baldino (L).

Could mean liberal?

If the (R) was for "right," then why did they not put an (L) to the right of wife Silda Wall Spitzer's name.

Such as: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (R) stands next to his wife Silda Wall Spitzer (L) as he announces his resignation..

Alternatively, they could have said:

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer stands to the right of his wife Silda Wall Spitzer as he announces his resignation..

Perhaps it would be useful to take a look at some other captions from this website:

http://www.theusdail...

and

http://www.theusdail...

Notice that the pics in the above links refer to a person on the left of the photos by inserting a "(L)" after their names. Also, notice that when the second person in the photos is referred to, a "(R)" isn't used. The "(R)" isn't included because it is obvious who the other person is since there are only two people in the photos. So, it appears that the Spitzer photo caption is consistent with other captions on the site. I also noticed that, when party affiliation is referred to on this site, the state abbreviation is inserted after the R or D, so it looks like (R-IL) or (D-NV). Thus, the Reuter's "excuse" is credible and it is a baseless claim they were purposefully trying to paint Spitzer as a Republican.

I just knew Reuters was going to use the "person on the right" tag, but I checked all US versions of the Yahoo story that day, and NONE of them used the (R) after Spitzer's name except in the case noted. I also saw many other AFP photos that ran on Yahoo where there were only Mr. & Mrs. Spitzer in the photo, and none of them used an (R) to incidate Eliot was on the right. By the way.. who in their right mind would wonder "gee, I wonder which one is Eliot?"

This is clearly how AFP & Reuters wanted the European Yahoo readers to THINK Spitzer was a Republican. I don't buy their excuse at all, but I saw it coming.

"New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (R) stands next to his wife Silda Wall Spitzer as he announces his resignation at his office in New York March 12, 2008. "

The (R) may not have been intended to signify Mr. Spitzer's political affiliation and was meant to indicate which person is actually Mr. Spitzer, just as they state. In that case, someone did a very sloppy job of editing as the caption already indicated both Mr. Spitzer and his wife. Did the writer and/or editor actually expect people to be confused as to who is the Mr. and who is the Mrs. in this photograph?

It must be noted that there are only TWO people pictured and both are identified directly by name. Mrs. Spitzer is further identified as the wife. If we are to accept the explanation, then it’s obvious that ether someone thinks that Mr. Spitzer and his wife are transvestites and that it is necessary to indicate which is Mr. Spitzer, or they think ordinary people are too stupid to be able to distinguish between the two based on their apparent genders.