Many of us have noticed the tendency of mainstream media reporters, when writing stories on politicians caught up in scandal, to identify Republicans as Republicans and to identify Democrats as—well, they often just leave their party identification to the reader’s imagination. Case in point: the Star Ledger’s early web story yesterday on the arrest of multiple New Jersey politicians on corruption charges. Note that the first one mentioned is identified as a Republican. No party identification is given for the rest, though National Review’s Jim Geraghty with some intrepid reporting ferrets it out: most of them are Democrats. Guess the nj.com writer didn’t have time to look up the party identification of the others.
But don’t worry, the Star Ledger is did eventually waddle in and identify one of those arrested as a Democrat in a later web story. But evidently the reporter didn’t have time to track down the party identification of the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield. Maybe he or she is putting in a Freedom of Information request.
