Five days ago I noted how the Associated Press ignored Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's Democratic affiliation in a story on a police raid of her private residence. Dixon is under investigation for corruption allegedly going back to her last public portfolio: Baltimore City Council President.
Well today the reliably liberal Democrat-boosting Baltimore Sun also provided a measure of cover for Dixon by leaving out her party label in John Fritze and Doug Donovan's article, "Dixon gifts probed."
Two reporters writing 34 paragraphs found zero occasions to mention Dixon's party affiliation. In Baltimore, the mayoral office is decided in a partisan contest, complete with a separate party primary, so the party affiliation is hardly a state secret.
The word "Democrat" did crop up once in Fritze and Donovan's article, but that was to label another Maryland politician -- not from Baltimore -- also under investigation for corruption:
In some instances, the documents raise questions. For a December 2003 trip to Boston, for instance, Dixon paid $35 on her personal credit card to upgrade her seat on an AirTran flight, but it is not clear who paid for the ticket itself.
Dixon was also scheduled to meet with Lipscomb and Sen. Ulysses Currie, a Prince George's County Democrat who is now under federal investigation, in February 2004, according to the documents. They do not say what the meeting was about.
(h/t e-mail tipster Jack L. Williams)
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BAU
June 24, 2008 - 16:46 ET by JTPBuisness
As
Usual
Yeah, but it's a meaningless partisan contest...
June 24, 2008 - 18:20 ET by AlexI have some sympathy for the argument that you should always include the party affiliation of a politician, no matter what the article's about. (Though mostly my sympathy for that argument comes from knowing that without a standard style, certain people throw around ridiculous charges of bias.)
But. If you're a reader of the Baltimore Sun, there's no way you don't know what party Dixon's from. And to say that Baltimore's mayor is picked in a partisan contest -- well, that just shows you haven't paid much attention to Baltimore politics lately. The last Republican mayor of Baltimore left office in 1967, and when it comes to electing mayors in Baltimore, the general election is, at most, a formality. The Democratic primary is where the action is. Dixon won the most recent general election with almost 90 percent of the vote. And that's low. As far as I can tell, in fact, the closest a Republican has come to becoming elected mayor of Baltimore in the past 25 years (that's as far back as the state website's records go) was in 1991, when one got about 28 percent of the vote.
Like I said, I have some limited sympathy for your argument. But reminding readers incessantly of a fact they already know, even when it's just one word, gets annoying. Would you really argue that, at this point, every article about George W. Bush has to say he's a Republican? Or that every article about Bill Clinton has to say he's a Democrat?
And I think the fact that they did mention the affiliation of Currie is further evidence for my point, by the way.
Sorry
June 24, 2008 - 18:25 ET by AlexOK, I take back the evidence part of my comment -- I just read your previous post about this, and clearly you do know Baltimore politics. But given that knowledge, why you would complain that the Sun didn't identify Dixon's party is just plain puzzling. The AP post has more merit, obviously. But I think that, rather than bias, the omission there is much more likely to be a reporter forgetting that he has knowledge of his beat readers might not and assuming that people will know that a black mayor of a big city is almost certain to be a Democrat. It's sloppy writing on his part.
Democrat Mayor in Baltimore?
June 24, 2008 - 21:03 ET by jefflebowskiDoesn't it kind of go without saying?
Jeff Lebowski
www.angrywhitedude.c...
Typical Democrat - Pelosi's Hometown Mayor
June 24, 2008 - 22:16 ET by Ole_SargeMayor Dixon
has two children to her former husband, whom she married in 1998 and divorced
in 2006.
http://www.citymayor...
And this one:
"In late 2003 and early 2004, I had a personal relationship with Ron
Lipscomb," Dixon
said in a statement. "We were both separated from our respective spouses
at the time, we traveled together and exchanged gifts on special occasions. Our
brief relationship was personal, and it did not influence my decisions related
to matters of city government."
Under penalty of perjury, the city ethics law requires elected officials to
report gifts from people who benefit from city business. Dixon has not reported any gifts from
Lipscomb in at least the past seven years. His company, Doracon Contracting,
has been involved in several high-profile developments in Baltimore, including those that have received
financial incentives from the city. Lipscomb, for instance, is involved in the
major development of Harbor East and in the revitalization in East Baltimore
near Johns Hopkins University.
From June 24th edition of the Baltimore Sun website.
Busniess as usual...
Rigging the Web
June 25, 2008 - 05:45 ET by KillgraveI think this has something to do with web searches. If you type in "scandal" and "Republican" in a search engine, you get 10 million hits. If you type in "Democrat" and "scandal", you get HALF that. Keep in mind, all scandal articles that have Democrat subjects, but not identified by party, will not show up in the search.
This is about rigging the historical record. A person doing simple research on the web would get the impression that Republicans are 100% more likely to be involved in scandals than Democrats.