AP, NBC, ABC, MSNBC ‘forgot’ to mention that Jailed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is a Democrat in its reporting. Kilpatrick is vice-president of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors and is a representative to the Democratic National Committee. After evidence of repeated abuses of power, obstruction of the courts, violation of court orders, sex scandals, perjury, and even assaulting the deputy’s who served papers on him, not only is the press not mentioning his party affiliation, of course there are few calls by partisan democrat groups for Kilpatrick to step down.
When Republican Larry Craig had legal trouble partisan’s on both sides asked him to step down, in spite of the fact that when the evidence was closely examined it appears that Craig was innocent of any wrong doing. Of course, the media went nuts with excessive coverage of the story and made sure that his party affiliation was prominent in that coverage.
The AP featured Crag’s party affiliation regularly:
Craig, a Republican who has represented Idaho in Congress for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intends to resign from the Senate on Sept. 30. But since then, he’s hired a prominent lawyer to investigate the possibility of reversing his plea, his spokesman said.
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=5635193
Contrast this as well with the coverage of recently indicted Senator Ted Stevens. Examine the AP article here http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_go_co/stevens_indictment. Stevens party affiliation is mentioned in the headline and appears ELEVEN TIMES in the body of article.
For more, including transcripts of the television news coverage that lacks the party affiliation, please visit Newsbusters here – http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/08/07/kilpatrick-leads-democratic-group-yet-all-cbs-fnc-refuse-id-him-d
It is not just the AP who is doing this in print news. Here are two more news stories where Kilpatrick’s party affiliation is conveniently left out.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080808/NEWS01/80808033
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/17120142/detail.html
Chuck Norton
UPDATE – we also reported on the party affiliation phenomenon with the elite media HERE and HERE and HERE.