Double Standards

ABC News has a photo montage of political sex scandals, featuring both Republicans and Democrats. But a few bloggers have noted that the captions for these photos often ignore the Democratic Party affiliation of Democrats while highlighting the GOP affiliation of Republican.Out of 13 pols featured, there were five Democrats, four of whom (80 percent) were unidentified by party. Of the eight…

A few days before Eliot Spitzer went down in flames, a highly-connected Barack Obama*  superdelegate was mired in accusations of corruption, bid-rigging and a dead-stripper sex scandal. Usually the media love to report the downfall of party bigwigs, but not in the case of Detroit's youngest mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Much of the media downplayed the mayor's scandals and did not report his party, let…

NewsBusters posters have already given Old Media deserved grief about its reluctance to pin the Democratic Party label on Eliot Spitzer, who, as of this moment, is still governor of New York (Brent Baker on evening news show coverage; Ken Shepherd on the BBC; Shepherd on the AP). But, as blogger Ace noted last night (warning: some profanity at Ace's link), ABC has outdone the other outlets one…

Incredibly, in lead stories Monday night about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer being linked to a prostitution ring, neither ABC's World News nor the NBC Nightly News verbally identified Spitzer's political party. Must mean he's a liberal Democrat -- and he is. CBS anchor Katie Couric, however, managed to squeeze in a mention of his party. Last August when news of Larry Craig's arrest broke, both…

Update (18:18 EDT): BBC has updated their article to note the Democratic party affiliation in the 3rd graf (link). Our tipster DB informs us that the BBC's North America editor Justin Webb replied to his e-mail with a promise to "try to get it changed." The BBC initially noted Gov. Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat, in an early draft of an online news article. The mention was in the 6th paragraph. But…

A prostitution scandal strikes the Democrats? When Sen. David Vitter admitted he’d used the services of the "DC Madam," thanks to probing by ABC News, the major media saw harm for the entire Republican Party nationwide. Will Governor Spitzer become a national problem for the entire Democratic party? Or will the media suddenly keep the scandal as localized as they can make it? NBC and MSNBC were…

The New York Times reported Democratic NY state assemblyman Brian McLaughlin pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges on Friday. As usual, no party identification in the headline, picture, caption or article, but there's a twist in this March 8 piece. The NYT also didn't report that he was in office at the time the crimes were committed. In the lede, the Times described McLaughlin as the “…

The Media, as Sisyphus, Unwinding its Terror TaleThere is a push by the Jurassic Press -- in two directions at once -- to frame just-so their presentation of the murder and murderers engaged in the attempted global implementation of political Islam. One such shove was again demonstrated by the New York Times this past February 13th. The Media attempt to present these bits of human flotsam -- and…

As reported by NewsBusters earlier, Michelle Obama debased America by characterizing it as a mean nation of "cynics, sloths, and complacents". Although this sort of talk is becoming a theme for Michelle-O she wasn't the first Obama to call America mean. A similar sentiment was echoed by Barack Obama in 1995 as he tried to rally the African-American vote for his Senate run after the Million Man…

Many people have noticed a distinct change in the way that the media cover terrorism. Right after 9/11, the Society of Professional Journalists issued “diversity guidelines,” which are now posted online. No longer confined to the quaint idea of impartially reporting the news, the media were advised to change opinions, engage in public relations and "demystify" Islam and even ask "targeted…

Unfortunately, it is not what you thinkSorely DispleasedIt seems it all depends on who is doing the asking. ABC News spent a good portion of last week's morning programming in deep prostration and self-analysis in response to criticism that their journalistic presentation suffered from partiality.Could it be? Had we at the Media Research Center (MRC) -- after twenty-one years of protracted press…

In the past couple of months, two journalists -- the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly -- have gotten themselves in trouble for making a seemingly innocent remark that involved the word "lynch."On Sunday, a Democrat Congresswoman from Ohio innocently accused the Obama campaign of trying to put a noose around Hillary Clinton's neck.Think this will stoke equal if any…

Joy Behar once again scolded conservatives for inflammatory rhetoric without realizing her own hypocrisy. On the February 28 edition of "The View," the panel spoke highly of the late William F. Buckley before Behar jumped in to compare the conservative icon to modern day conservatives. Behar chastised those who "name call and yell about things." Perhaps she should chastise herself.In a span of a…

The title to this article is exactly how I'd write it if I were a political hack trying to drum up a faux controversy for use by other political hacks in the mainstream media. Which is exactly what Sam Stein of the Huffington Post did on February 12th as he broke out the yellowkid journalistic mold for a fantasy leftist hack attack on John McCain headlined in giant font, McCain Received $100,000…