Yesterday it was The Associated Press that couldn’t bring it self to use the word “Democrat” in its story about former NC Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps getting out of prison. Raleigh AP Bureau Chief Sue Wilson had this to say in response to my email yesterday:
It was a mistake. We should have included it. It will be added to today’s stories and those run in the future.
True to her word, the latest versions of the AP story on Phipps point out that she is a Democrat. AP may deserve a little slack (but not much) for yesterday’s story because that was a brief written quickly when the news was announced. The News & Observer doesn’t have such an excuse. In a lengthy story about Phipps today, including a biography in a sidebar, readers are never told that this case of corruption, that led to an elected official spending three years in prison involved a Democrat.
As I wrote Sue Wilson in my email, this is one of the biggest complaints media critics on the conservative side have about the mainstream media: that they air brush Democrat from corruption stories and play up party affiliation when Republicans are involved. That this happened twice with two major North Carolina news outlets shows that it’s not just our imagination. Call it a mistake if you want, but it looks like bias to me.
