Name That Party

Okay boys and girls. It's time again to play that favorite NewsBusters game...Name That Party! Today's game is a real challenge. The politician in question was a Broward County Commissioner sentenced to prison for money laundering. Hmmm... Broward County? Could the clue as to the party label be found from that fact? Nope. Too tough. The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel does us no favors by completely…

Columbus Bureau Chief Jim Provance at the Toledo Blade is a one-man "Name That Party" creativity machine: In March of last year (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in a story about late financial reports from Ohio's state government, Provance identified State Auditor Mary Taylor, who criticized Governor Ted Strickland's administration for being so tardy with the numbers that they could not…

Consistency, thy name is AP. The Associated Press's story roll-out on former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann's anticipated guilty pleas to ethics violations followed the usual script: The initial report, carried here at Cleveland.com, failed to mention Dann's Democratic Party affiliation. A later extended report breaks down and reveals Dann's party membership in its ninth of eleven paragraphs…

Hosting a debate segment this morning between  Republican strategist Alex Conant and Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee that examined the political dimensions of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, MSNBC's Tamron Hall played soundbites from two politicians with rather divergent views on offshore drilling. The first was liberal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) opposing expanding offshore…

Last August, Maryland state delegate Jon Cardin (D-Baltimore County), nephew of the state's junior U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin (D), proposed marriage to his girlfriend. But unlike normal folks who might propose via the jumbotron at the ball park or by having a waiter slip the diamond ring in a champagne flute, Del. Cardin decided to get the local cops to help arrest his woman's heart -- by…

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of…

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…

Why does the mainstream media keep trotting out the Boy Who Cried Right-Wing Terrorist? Better known as Mark Potok of the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center, he has been trumpeted by a number of media outlets seeking to promote the notion that "right-wingers" are lurking behind every corner to overthrow the federal government.The fact that he is consistently wrong about, well, just about…

Yesterday, Newsweek's The Gaggle blog shared with its readers video of Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., in a congressional hearing expressing his concern that expanding the U.S. military presence on Guam might cause the island to tip over: My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.Yet in the caption beneath the video embed, Newsweek failed to…

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…

The New York Times's City Room blog included a Friday piece on the orphaned Web site of Hiram Monserrate, a former state senator who is again running for office.  From "When Not to Accept Comments:"Now, as many will remember, the former Queens legislator was tossed out of the State Senate in February after he was convicted of assaulting his female companion. His vacant seat will be filled in a…

Former Birmingham, Alabama mayor Larry Langford (pictured at right in AP photo), who is a Democrat, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Friday for bribery.In reporting the story, Reuters did what a competent wire service should do, informing readers of Langford's party affiliation early on:The former mayor of Alabama's largest city, Birmingham, was sentenced on Friday for his role in corrupt…

This one's a particularly egregious example of party-ID dodging, even for those of us who are used to seeing the establishment media avoid mentioning the political party of almost any disgraced or troubled Democratic public official. Former Racine, Wisconsin mayor Gary Becker, a Democrat, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for child enticement and attempted sexual assault of a…

LoHud.com reports (HT to an NB e-mailer) that White Plains, New York Mayor Adam Bradley "turned himself in to police headquarters ... (Sunday) morning after his wife filed a complaint with police that he jammed her finger in a door around 9:30 a.m. Bradley was then arraigned on a third-degree misdemeanor assault charge at White Plains City Court." The web site does not identify Bradley's…