Name That Party

“Rising star in the Republican Party.” “Up and coming star in Republican politics.” Once again, the networks are hyping the fall of a GOP politician, making sure to highlight the party status of Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. This is a habit not usually followed when the offending politician is a Democrat. 

ABC’s legal drama For The People has covered a lot of social justice topics in its short run on television, quite a few of them based on real-life events. However, the Shondaland series may have hit a new low by rewriting history to suit their liberal needs. The May 15 episode “Extraordinary Circumstances” resembles that of an infamous case against a Democrat governor but with a significant party…

It took former Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman three hours to resign Monday night after accusations arose alleging he would violently strike his girlfriends without their consent. But throughout ABC World News Tonight’s two minutes and 21 seconds report on the situation, there was not a single mention of the fact that he was an elected Democrat. In contrast, both CBS and…

Despite relatively recent Associated Press Stylebook changes mandating that elected officials' political party "should be routinely included" in stories about them, the wire service appears to be backsliding. On Saturday, I noted the wire service's failure – before being shamed into a partial remedy — to tag DC politicians engaged in public anti-Semitic outbursts and conspiracy theories as…

The Associated Press apparently was shamed by a Washington Examiner reporter Wednesday when it revised a story on District of Columbia Councilman Trayon White to include his Democratic Party affiliation. White has been sharply criticized and ridiculed for anti-Semitic remarks, including claiming that Jews control the climate. The Democratic Party tag didn't arrive in the AP's revision until…

The Boston Globe has published at least three reports about Bryon Hefner, the husband of now-former Massachusetts State Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, culminating today in coverage of Hefner's indictment on "multiple charges of sexual assault, criminal lewdness, and distributing nude photographs without consent." None of the stories reviewed directly tagged Rosenberg as a Democrat.

The former mayor of Nashville, Tennessee Megan Barry was arraigned Tuesday on charges of felony theft for using taxpayer funds to support her affair with her bodyguard. It was one of the big stories of the day with all three of the evening network news broadcasts giving it airtime. The only problem was with NBC Nightly News not reporting Barry’s Democratic Party affiliation. Between anchor Lester…

On January 31, Nashville's Mayor Megan Barry announced that she had ended an extramarital affair with city policeman and bodyguard Rob Forrest. Since then, except for the Associated Press, the national media showed little interest in covering a whirlwind of subsequent troubling revelations. Even last week's call by the left-leaning Nashville Tennessean for Barry's resignation has been virtually…

NPR couldn't be bothered to include pro-gun rights talking heads in their Monday coverage of boycotts targeting the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers. Morning Edition featured pro-gun control activist Shannon Watts during their report on the "more than a dozen companies...cutting ties with the National Rifle Association." However, the program merely read an excerpt from a NRA…

Wednesday afternoon, the Tennessean reported that Nashville Mayor Megan Barry disclosed that "she had an extramarital affair with the police officer in charge of her security detail." The paper's story tagged Barry as a Democrat (in their fourth paragraph), but national stories seen at the Associated Press and ABC News have not.

Mayor Joy Cooper of Hallandale Beach, Florida, was forced to resign by Sunshine State Governor Rick Scott on Friday after her Thursday arrest on three felony charges: campaign finance violations, official misconduct and money laundering. At least four Florida news outlets have run reports failing to tag Cooper, who is accused of accepted illegal campaign finance checks from Russians, as a…

Former Massachusetts State Senator Brian Joyce was arrested a week ago and charged with accepting over $1 million in bribes. The story is getting very little coverage outside of New England, even though Joyce was quite creative in the forms of bribery he accepted, and even though Joyce's arrest continues long trend of corruption among Bay State Democratic Party legislative leaders and politicians…

Mayor Joey Torres of Paterson, New Jersey, that state's third-largest city and a Democrat, pled guilty to corruption charges on Monday after leaving office the previous Friday. According to a USA Today affiliate, Torres and three supervisors in the city's public works department "pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree conspiracy on Friday for directing Paterson employees to perform work at a…

One would have thought the New York Times would have learned its labeling lesson, after the backlash it received when it managed to leave off the inconvenient “Democrat” label from its initial coverage of the corruption trial of New Jersey U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. Yet the first filings of Benjamin Weiser’s relatively sympathetic story on the sentencing of former Democratic Rep. Anthony…