Why does it seem that, when a Democratic politician's career is on the line, Old Media reporters find a way to make it look like it's only Republicans who want to push him or her out the door?

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who for a while was seen as the Buckeye State's version of New York's now-disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer, is fighting for his political life.

In a Friday press conference statement (a JPG transcript of statement, opening in a separate window, is here), Dann admitted to an extramarital affair with an unidentified employee and announced that he was discharging three of his closest advisers over formal complaints of sexual harassment. Storm clouds potentially loom over the fallout from this, plus other events and incidents too numerous to detail here, occurring on Dann's watch.

Dann declared Friday that he has no plans to resign.

By mid-Saturday, two of Ohio's major newspapers, and many of its smaller ones, had issued editorial calls for Dann's resignation. It was clear that many others would follow on Sunday -- and they did. Ohio's left-leaning blogs are also mostly in the Dann-must-go camp.

Yet here's how the Associated Press's John McCarthy played the Dann story in his Saturday mid-afternoon report:

Old Media business reporters have a definitionally-incorrect habit of labeling single industries or economic sectors as being "in recession," when the term, as defined here, can only describe national economies or the world economy. Two examples of this are New York Times reporter David Leonhardt's description of manufacturing as being in recession in February 2007 (laughably incorrect, in any event), and the Times's employment of the term "housing recession" 25 times since October 2006, as seen in this Times search (with the phrase in quotes).

But if I wanted to be consistent with this routine form of journalistic malpractice, I would characterize the newspaper business -- at least in terms of the top 25 in the industry's food chain -- not as being in recession, but instead as going through a deep, dark, painful, protracted depression.

Ohio's Old Media needs a collective medical intervention to battle Chronic Reporting Amnesia (CRA).

Ohio's Democratic Attorney General, who has been no stranger to controversy since his election in November 2006, is in major hot water over the conduct of two employees on his staff:

An attorney representing two women whose sexual harassment allegations have triggered a widening scandal at Attorney General Marc Dann’s office says his clients have abundant evidence of their claims.

It has to be tough advocating an ideology that requires seeking out things that are bad in American society.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman found one very heartbreaking story Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton had been using on the campaign and used it in the lede of his April 11 column.

Unfortunately for Krugman it wasn't quite accurate. Even worse, his own paper was one of the first media outlets to debunk the story.

"Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic," Krugman wrote. "Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn't see her again unless she paid $100 per visit - which she didn't have. Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died."

Here we go again.

A March 22 Columbus Dispatch report by Catherine Candisky on increased Food Stamp usage in Ohio repeats the tired "$1 per meal for food" canard:

"Food stamps provide only about $1 per person, per meal. Who in the world is buying groceries with that?" asked Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Bank.

On average, food stamps are now providing less than two weeks of groceries.

"There's the presumption that folks have the cash to make up the rest. Well, they don't" .....

Sigh. As noted time, and time, and time, and time again, the benefits (called "Maximum Allotments" by the government) for families with no other resources are higher (graphic link is to related page at the USDA web site):

You're all aware, I'm sure, of the several attacks against our fighting men and women perpetrated by city governments of late. The Berkeley City Council, who intended to try and kick Marine recruiting offices out of the city, and Toledo, where Mayor Finkbeiner refused to allow the Marines to exit a bus in his city when they arrived to start planned upon exercises, are all over the news. It is also well known that in Toledo, Ohio and Berkeley, California protesters for and against the Marines have been deployed to face each other and the news media have been there to chronicle it all. But, one paper has taken it upon itself to try and excuse the very people who put these ignorant politicians into office who caused these rows in the first place.

The Toledo Free Press published a recent article titled "Controversy over Marines rejection impacts city's development efforts", the main thrust of which is that people shouldn't blame the businesses of either Toledo or Berkeley for the actions of their politicians. But, after seeing all the whining about lost revenue by the business community in both cities and after seeing them plead with people not to blame them for what their politicians do, it left me wondering why shouldn't we hold voters accountable for what their politicians do?

On Saturday, Toledo-area blogger Maggie Thurber, yours truly (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog), and many others dealt with the now-national story of how Glass City Mayor Carty Finkbeiner had turned away Marine Corps Reservists who had been given prior clearance to conduct weekend urban warfare exercises in the city.

The Toledo Blade's Sunday and Monday coverage of the story clearly showed sympathy towards the still-unrepentant mayor, while taking a "what's the big deal?" attitude towards those who don't appreciate what he did.

Sunday's report by JC Reindl started its defense in its headlines ("Finkbeiner taking flak over Marines; Mayor defends his decision to cancel urban war games"; bolds are mine throughout), and continued into its text:

Is the Glass City becoming the Berkeley of the Midwest?

In today's Toledo Blade (HT Maggie Thurber; bolds are mine):

VACATE THE PREMISES
Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown
He says urban exercises scare people

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.

Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.

"The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," said Brian Schwartz, the mayor's spokesman.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer apparently decided to do something wtih a story it was dragged into kicking and screaming last fall -- one that it seemed at the time to be wishing would go away.

Saturday, David Briggs, the paper's religion reporter, did something with a near non-story relating to previous events that he and his paper failed to do twice when it counted: He followed up, reporting on the difficulties a Cleveland mosque is experiencing in finding a new imam.

That contrasts starkly with how Briggs and the PD handled the story of the guy who was on the verge of becoming that mosque's imam last fall.

For personal and professional reasons, it gives me absolutely no pleasure to say that I saw this coming, and that it came sooner than I thought it would.

Here's the news, assembled from wire reports by the Cincinnati Enquirer, in an article that should be entitled "Ford to Workers: Go Away" (bolds are mine throughout) --

Ford Motor Co. will offer buyout and early retirement packages to 54,000 U.S. hourly workers, or 93 percent of its hourly work force, in an effort to cut costs and replace those leaving with lower-paid workers. Thursday's announcement came as Ford said it narrowed its losses in 2007 but warned that the outlook for U.S. sales in 2008 remains grim.

Not that Dick Feagler meant to.

(Note: This is about a local Northeastern Ohio column, but deals with a media bias issue of broad significance.)

What Feagler revealed gets to the very heart of journalism's failure, why blogs exist, why many news consumers pay attention to them (in fact, feel that they must), and why they matter.

I really want to admire guys like Dick Feagler (and the relatively few gals, back in the day). Their telephones, steel trap memories, and Rolodexes were the "databases" of that era. They worked, and their modern counterparts still work, in an underpaid, underappreciated job that, when done correctly, is something you don't clock out of, and can go crazy in the blink of an eye. The Dick Feaglers used the old-fashion tools and applied the old-fashioned work ethic to do their jobs as best they could. Their successors are typically doing the same, with better tools.

But that avoids the real question: What was, and still is, their job?

Displayed prominently on the home page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web site at 12:30 Tuesday afternoon was this tease for a story about a local politician in hot water for crude remarks to a colleague:

GOP lawmaker punished
Minority House Republicans have severely disciplined a Vancouver lawmaker for inappropriate remarks to a female staffer.

The link takes readers to AP writer Curt Woodward's story, "House GOP member punished for remark to woman aide," in which we learn in the lead paragraph that "Minority House Republicans" in the Washington state House of Representatives, "already reeling from a sex scandal that prompted one member to quit, have severely disciplined a Vancouver lawmaker for inappropriate remarks to a female staffer."

We have seen over and over again how the MSM (and the AP in particular) can't seem to force themselves to mention the party affiliation of some elected official accused and/or convicted of a crime if that official happens to be a Democrat. Now the MSM has expanded that from elected officials even to party workers. The AP reports a story on two Democrat election officials convicted of recount rigging and neglect of official duties for their actions during the 2004 elections but, for some hard to determine reason, few if any news sources are mentioning that these two are Democrats. Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer have pleaded guilty to the charges after an aborted conviction from last January, the original trial having been granted a retrial on grounds not connected with the pair's actions.

Cleveland Plain Dealer religion reporter David Briggs used this blog post title yesterday when he did his initial report on Ahmed Alzaree's resignation:

New Cleveland imam quits before he starts

The title of the Plain Dealer Metro Section post by Briggs, which I believe was also used in the print edition:

New Islamic Center imam Ahmed Alzaree resigns

The Associated Press wrote up the story with very minor modifications that mentioned the Homeland Security issues Alzaree acquaintance Wagdi Ghoneim had with the US Department of Homeland Security. The AP's headline writer then, incredibly, applied this headline (link is to MSNBC; headline is present at several other sites):

Blog critics force imam to resign at Ohio mosque

I have two words for AP: As if.

Cross-posted at the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Wide Open blog. Also, this BizzyBlog post has links to previous posts and further updates.

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer's David Briggs, quoted in entirety for fair use and discussion purposes -- the news and the preceding posts explain it all:

New Cleveland imam quits before he starts

Imam Ahmed Alzaree announced Monday, three days before he was to start work as the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, that he was resigning.

Alzaree said allegations by bloggers that he was anti-Semitic and was associated with individuals suspected of having terrorist ties so poisoned the atmosphere in Northeast Ohio that he and his wife, Marwa, decided to look elsewhere.

"Cleveland now is a nightmare for her," Alzaree said. "It will never be a good start for me and the Jewish community.

The mosque has accepted Alzaree's resignation, Zahid Siddiqi, general secretary of the mosque's executive committee, said Monday afternoon.

"We certainly don't want to impose on him and his family," Siddiqi said.

Alzaree is the former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Omaha.

Links to previous posts are after the jump.

Update: Briggs posted a much longer piece just after 5PM, apparently for the Metro section.

UPDATE, Oct. 26, 10 p.m.: A Plain Dealer report by David Briggs entitled "New Cleveland imam hopes to ease Muslim-Jewish relations" went up today (Oct. 26) at 1:56 PM. I am deferring comment on it until sometime Monday, as new info has become available that requires vetting (original plan to respond Saturday was moved to Sunday, and has now been moved again).

_________________________________________

Note: This has been posted at NewsBusters because it addresses an example of what I believe is lax local media coverage that may be occurring in other communities around the country. I have closed comments off at this post so that all comments end up at Part 2.

Don't Cleveland Plain Dealer readers and the community deserve to know if the Islamic Center of Cleveland's new imam is the same as the old imam?

On September 25 at 2:30 PM, Cleveland Plain Dealer Religion Reporter David Briggs posted a Cleveland.com blog entry ("Islamic Center hires new imam to replace deported cleric") about the naming of Ahmed Alzaree as the new imam at the Islamic Center of Cleveland (ICC).

In that post, he noted that:

UPDATE, Oct. 26, 10 p.m.: A Plain Dealer report by David Briggs entitled "New Cleveland imam hopes to ease Muslim-Jewish relations" went up today (Oct. 26) at 1:56 PM. I am deferring comment on it until sometime Monday, as new info has become available that requires vetting (original plan to respond Saturday was moved to Sunday, and has now been moved again).

_________________________________________

Note: This has been posted at NewsBusters because it addresses an example of what I believe is lax local media coverage that may be occurring in other communities around the country.

Part 1 covered events and disclosures surrounding the announcement of the appointment, effective November 1, of Ahmed Alzaree to become the new imam at the Islamic Center of Cleveland (ICC), specifically:

• The original September 25 blog post and September 26 print edition article communicating the announcement by the Cleveland Plain Dealer's David Briggs.
• My September 25 blog post (Wide Open, BizzyBlog, and NewsBusters), revealing a March 2003 sermon given by Alzaree while at his previous post at the Islamic Center of Omaha (ICO), and Alzaree's association with now-deported imam Wagdi Ghoneim.
• A follow-up article by the PD's Robert Smith which addressed some of the concerns about Alzaree, but which also left so many items unanswered that it was reasonable to expect that there would be some kind of additional follow-up by the paper in the coming days and weeks.
• My post reacting to Smith's story.
• The lack of PD follow-up since Smith's report.

In this post, I am reporting a number of additional items that I believe are relevant to Alzaree's imminent ascension to his new position.

It's time for yet another edition of Name That Party! According to NBC station WKYC, Ohio State Representative Matt Barrett was giving a lecture to some high school students when he inserted a memory stick and showed them a nude picture. Guess which party he belongs to?