Name That Party

Wednesday's NBC Nightly News devoted a full minute to the guilty convictions for bribery, racketeering and  wire fraud against former nine-term Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, but failed to name his political party. ABC's Charles Gibson mentioned Jefferson's party in a brief World News item. The CBS Evening News didn't air anything about Jefferson's convictions which were…

Here's a particularly noteworthy "Name That Party" follow-up.In a February post ("AP’s ‘Name That Party’ Twist: Disgraced PA Judges’ Dem Party ID Disappears After Initial Inclusion"; at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the Associated Press had originally identified the party of two Democratic judges involved in a shocking scheme that pushed thousands of juvenile offenders into detention…

ABC’s Ron Claiborne on Saturday managed to file a report on vast Democratic corruption in the state of New Jersey and, at the same time, not once use the word Democrat. While reporting on an unfolding scandal that saw the arrest of a number of the state’s mayors and assemblymen, all but one a member of the Democratic Party, the Good Morning America weekend news anchor completely ignored party…

Continuing a well-established pattern, the broadcast network evening newscasts all failed to point out the party affiliation of the major New Jersey office-holders amongst the 44 people the FBI arrested Thursday for corruption. As the AP pointed out, all but one are Democrats:  “Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two…

This morning, some 30 people were arrested in New Jersey, the fruit of a two-year federal investigation into a international money laundering scandal. Among those arrested were Democratic Mayors Peter Cammarano III (Hoboken) and Dennis Elwell (Secaucus), as well as Democratic deputy mayor of Jersey City Leona Beldini and Republican state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt. But if you only got your news…

You don't have to be one of South Carolina Mark Sanford's few remaining supporters or sympathizers (and I am neither) to recognize the following AP headline as ridiculously, sarcastically biased:While this headline might make be good water cooler and late-night comedy fodder (perhaps that was the point?), it's more than a little unprofessional, and beyond that more than likely inaccurate.

Where's the party (identification)?On Thursday, Chicago-based New York Times reporter Monica Davey reported on more controversy over Rod Blagojevich, the corrupt former Democratic governor of Illinois who tried to sell off the state's U.S. Senate seat that was left empty after Sen. Barack Obama assumed the presidency. In "Top Blagojevich Aide Pleads Guilty to Fraud," Davey managed to totally…

Noteworthy from Friday night's broadcast network evening newscasts which, a day after his death, spent 95 percent of their air time on Michael Jackson -- all but 1:03 of ABC's approximate 22 minutes was devoted to Jackson, all but 34 seconds of CBS and all but 1:22 of NBC, for 2:59, less than three minutes in total for all news beyond Jackson: ♦ Only ABC's World News reported how Monica Conyers,…

In their latest article analyzing the extramarital affairs of the deplorable Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, the Associated Press demonstrates once again that the word ‘logic’ has somehow become lost in translation.In a piece entitled, Sanford’s extramarital affair a problem for GOP, the AP gleefully discusses the topic of Sanford’s misdeeds and their potential effect on the Republican…

In his Wednesday brief, "Senator Says He Had Affair With An Aide," New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn let us know by the fourth word that U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada, the senator who confessed to the extramarital affair, is a Republican. In paragraph four, Herszenhorn poured on the salt, bringing up Ensign's former membership in Promise Keepers, a Christian ministry that promotes…

All three broadcast network morning shows on Wednesday made a point of labeling Nevada Senator John Ensign as a “Republican” after the Senator came forward last night to admit having an extramarital affair last year. NBC, which refrained for days from calling New York Governor Eliot Spitzer a “Democrat” after his relationship with a prostitute was exposed, called Ensign a “conservative…

And now another episode of Name That Party where the news customer reads a story and tries his darndest to discern from what party a scandal plagued politician hails. We have many times said that one of the main rules of the Name That Party parlor game is that if the Old Media is talking about a troubled Democrat, often times the pol's party is either not mentioned at all or is buried way down in…

William Jefferson, who was found with $90,000 of cash in his freezer, is now on trial for 16 counts including racketeering, obstruction of justice, and money laundering. The Washington Post's Allison Klein did a story on his trial today, but for some reason Klein failed to mention Jefferson's party identification. Could it be, perhaps, because Jefferson was a Democrat while he was in office,…

It's been a little while since we had a good "Name that Party" story, but leave it to corruption plagued Democrats and their willing accomplices in the Old Media to always find some time in their busy schedules to give us an opportunity to play our favorite game. This time it is a former Speaker of the House in Massachusetts who, along with a cadre of his pals, was indicted on corruption charges…