Ed White

The Associated Press is still failing to tag the currently imprisoned former Detroit Mayor and former beneficiary of President Barack Obama's high praise Kwame Kilpatrick as a Democrat.

I know, same-old, same-old. And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. But there's more to this particular chapter in this ongoing "Name That Party" narrative.

The wire service kept its near-perfect Kilpatrick non-labeling track record intact in two shorter items and a lengthier treatment of the latest development in Kwame's calamaties, all published in roughly the past 24 hours. The closest Kwame got to being tagged as a Dem occurred in an otherwise detailed report turned in by Ed White, where he described Kilpatrick's mother, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, as "D-Mich." The link to White's report doesn't contain his byline; I'll explain why later in the post, where I will also suggest that there is reason to believe the AP has attempted to bottle up White's full report.

A six-paragraph story carried at the Toledo Blade last night (HT to Maggie Thurber in an e-mail) described the latest and by far most serious development in this sickening saga:

In an indictment filed Wednesday, he’s accused of failing to report at least $640,000 in taxable income between 2003 and 2008, which includes money, private jet flights and personal expenses paid by the (Kilpatrick) Civic Fund.

Just call it "journalism as usual."

One thing you can say about the Associated Press's and most of the rest of the establishment media's treatment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during the past two-plus years is that they've been almost totally consistent. They pretend not to know or care what political party Kilpatrick represented throughout his political career, and fail to acknowledge Barack Obama's fondness for him before his legal and criminal troubles began.

The latest episode in this bizarre soap opera/insult to the taxpaying public has Kilpatrick, who now lives with his wife in Dallas, accused of violating his probation by not remitting monies received that he had agreed to pay to the City of Detroit to help take care of an acknowledged $1 million debt to the city. The cliffhanger is: Will he or won't he be sent to jail again?

Today, the AP continued following its two-year pattern (see related March 2008 post at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), this time as written by reporters Ed White and Corey Williams, of avoiding any mention of Kilpatrick's status as a Democratic politician when he was mayor of Detroit. Here are several paragraphs from the pair's prose:

The wife of Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan was sentenced yesterday for bribery.

Here is how the Associated Press presented its headline and first few paragraphs in the matter:

The headline is pretty pathetic considering who the "councilperson" is related to, but at least the AP's Ed White got Conyers's party affiliation into his second paragraph.

So, overall, you might be tempted to think that the AP might be improving a bit. Not really.

Earlier today I noted how Associated Press reporter Ed White noted that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) will not be able to leave Michigan to travel to the Democratic Convention in Denver later this month. Kilpatrick, White also noted, is a superdelegate.

But White returned to AP form later on August 15 with a story published shortly before 5 p.m. EDT entitled "Detroit mayor to stand trial on assault charges." In that article, neither the words "Democrat" nor "superdelegate" appear even once, nor did any mention of yesterday's legal back-and-forth about the terms of the mayor's release on bond. An excerpt: