As the ongoing Tony Rezko trial yields more news of corruption, once again the mainstream media aren't identifying the party affiliation of the Democratic perpetrators. This time, the culprit is the Chicago Tribune in an article regarding a witness testimony that Alderman Richard Mell, father-in-law of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, hoped to receive kickbacks from an insider deal at a state pension fund. The article goes on to describe this new information along with the details of the deal for which Mell hoped.
The Tribune also noted that this finding adds to the "Mell-Blagojevich relationship that has devolved to downright dysfunctional in recent years."
Yet despite running a thirty paragraph article over two pages, the Tribune failed to recognize either Mell or Blagojevich are Democrats.
NewsBusters has noted this kind of thing recently in coverage of the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal. As noted by Brent Baker, the USA Today did not initially identify Spitzer as a Democrat, but included in its story past Republican scandals surrounding including Larry Craig and David Vitter, along with their party identification. Rich Noyes recently did a study on television networks and found that they are always label Republicans when reporting sex scandals.
