The Mainstream Media: Party Count — Spitzer Vs. Craig & Vitter

14 Mar, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Over at Newsbusters, they’ve been focusing on a particular aspect of the Eliot Spitzer scandal since it broke. The results of a study they’ve done won’t surprise any conservatives, but if the mainstream media were really serious about being objective, it would lead to a lot of soul searching at the networks,

Study: Networks Always Label GOPers With Sex Scandals

My colleague Brent Baker has painstakingly documented how the big three broadcast networks have gone out of their way to avoid labeling scandal-scarred New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a “Democrat.” An examination of the fifteen ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows through Wednesday night finds Spitzer was called a Democrat just 20% of the time — twice on CBS, once on ABC, and never on NBC.

…The list of examples goes on, but the bottom line is that in the early days of their scandals, Vitter and Craig were labeled as Republicans on every broadcast news program — 100% — that mentioned their wrongdoing. For Democrat Spitzer, four out of five news programs (80%) have skipped his label. On NBC’s Today and Nightly News through Wednesday night, reporters never once acknowledged that Spitzer was a Democrat.

I’m sure there are people who would write this off as just coincidence, but setting aside the huge difference (20% for Spitzer, 100% for Vitter and Craig), do you notice these sorts of “mistakes” always go one way? I mean, just as an example, you would never, ever, see something as flimsy as the fake Bush was AWOL papers that Rather came out with aimed at John Kerry. No, those sort of “errors” always seem to break in one direction…