Once again the press shows its bias

[jimpeel]

You know, that bias which some here deny exists? In fact, we had a pretty lively discussion HERE in which the virtues of using the word "tone" over the word "bias" were discussed.

It seems that when it comes to mentioning the party affiliation of public figures in scandals the press reserves that mention to the republicans and the GOP almost exclusively.

When it came to reporting on Kwame Kilpatrick his party affiliation was not mentioned at all.

When it came to reporting on Ted Stevens his party affiliation was mentioned seven times and the GOP was not only in the headline but four more times in the body of the story.

FoxNews VIDEO SEGMENT

The Stevens story CLICK

The Kilpatrick story CLICK

The Newsbusters story CLICK

Kilpatrick Leads Democratic Group, Yet All But CBS & FNC Refuse to ID Him as (D)
By Brent Baker
August 7, 2008 - 22:01 ET

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hardly reticent about touting himself as a Democrat. After all, he's the Vice President of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors and in January was re-elected its representative to the Democratic National Committee. But in ABC and NBC news stories Thursday night about how a Michigan judge ordered him to jail immediately for violating his bond, neither identified him as a Democrat (verbally or on screen) -- not even in a full two-minute NBC story. On CBS, fill-in anchor Russ Mitchell didn't mention Kilpatrick's party in three teases/plugs for the upcoming story, nor in the introduction to it, but two-thirds into his report, Dean Reynolds, who in a March story failed to ID Kilpatrick, referenced: “Once a rising star in Democratic Party politics...”

Making that same “rising star” point, from a smoggy (or foggy?) Beijing, NBC anchor Brian Williams managed to avoid mentioning Kilpatrick's party affiliation:

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was once viewed as a rising political star in the United States. Tonight he has fallen pretty far from those early lofty and glowing predictions...

Two of the cable news networks were no more accurate. Filling in on MSNBC's Hardball, Mike Barnicle avoided Kilpatrick's party in a brief item on news of his jailing while on CNN's The Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer did not note Kilpatrick's Democratic affiliation in several updates and plugs and, in a full story in the 5PM EDT hour, the MRC's Matthew Balan noticed, Mary Snow failed to verbally name Kilpatrick's party in her piece.The only hint came in this chyron at the bottom of the screen for barely three seconds: "MAYOR KWAME KILPATRICK (D) DETROIT."

FNC was the cable world exception as Bret Baier, filling in as host of Special Report, set up a story:

Detroit's Democratic Mayor will be spending the night in jail. A judge today told Kwame Kilpatrick he was going to be treated just like any other person who had broken the law. Correspondent Todd Conner has the story....

[more]

 

[2minkey]

yeah given there's such a history of black republican mayors in detroit, the omission sure is telling.

next they'll leave out the fact that the pope is catholic in a story on the papacy.

 

[Gonz]

yeah given there's such a history of black republican mayors in detroit, the omission sure is telling.

next they'll leave out the fact that the pope is catholic in a story on the papacy.

2 for 2...he's on a roll