You all know the long running joke about how the media won’t name a corrupt official’s political affiliation if they’re a Democrat, but how the media finds it relevant enough to put it in the headline if they’re a Republican.  Here they go again:

There have been hundreds of news stories about Bell city officials’ jaw-dropping salaries. In this poor city on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where the per capita annual income is $24,800 a year, the city manager, Robert Rizzo, had a salary of $787,637… With benefits, his total annual compensation, according to the Los Angeles Times, came to $1.5 million a year… Not only that, but Rizzo was entitled to 28 weeks off a year for vacation and sick leave.

According to Nexis, there have been more than 300 news stories reporting on the Bell scandal. Guess how many mentioned the party affiliation of the corrupt government bureaucrats?

One. Yes, just one. Now guess if the government officials were Democrats or Republicans? Yes, that is correct…

The one newspaper to cough up party affiliations, The Orange County Register, admitted that the corrupt officials were all Democrats only in response to reader complaints about the peculiar omission.

Lots of news stories on the scandal in Bell used the word “Democrat” or “Democratic.” But that was only to say that the DEMOCRATIC attorney general of California, Jerry Brown, who is running on the DEMOCRATIC ticket for governor, is investigating the Bell officials’ salaries.

So we know the media are aware of party affiliations. They just chose not to mention it when it would require them to identify shockingly corrupt government officials as Democrats.

I found this at Ace of Spades, who adds:

…this is the clearest, most inarguable example of media bias there is. There should be a simple rule — a stylebook rule — dictating that a politician caught in corruption should have his party affiliation noted in the first paragraph…

But the MFM refuses to impose such a stringent rule. They want to keep the freedom to only note the party affiliation of corrupt Republicans while not mentioning it at all with regard to corrupt Democrats.

They want, as they call it, the freedom to apply their judgment and examine context. In their judgment and in context, they always find that the party affiliation of corrupt Republicans is relevant, but the party affiliation of corrupt Democrats never is.

‘Guess which party’ is a game you can play at home, too!

As one of many examples,  here is a story from The Huntsville Times on convicted Democrat Sue Schmitz.  BTW, I didn’t have to search hard for an example – I went through our archives and picked a random news-based Schmitz post  – it linked to The Times.   No mention of Schmitz’ Democratic Party affiliation.  To double-check, I found a post from Brian on Schmitz’ conviction for stealing from children.  Again, no mention in The Times about  Schmitz’ being a Democrat legislator.