Of the East Coast's most prestigious papers -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post -- only the Journal today failed to note Jesse Jackson Junior's Democratic Party affiliation, with staff writer Devlin Barrett failing to mention that fact in his 11-paragraph story. For their part, Washington Post staffers Ann Marimow and Rachel Weiner did mention Jackson is a Democrat, but that came 13 paragraphs into their 32-paragraph front-pager in the August 15 paper.

But of the three major newspapers, it was the Times's coverage which gave readers the most biased coverage. Reporter Ashley Southall immediately noted Jackson's Democratic Party affiliation, but she painted his demise as a tragic fall from grace, not a run of the mill crooked politician-gets-his-just-deserts story: