"Dropping the D"

In my December 10, 2008 blog "Don't Fall in Love with Politicians..." regarding the scandal surrounding Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich I noted that "...it is interesting to note that on most of morning news shows (Today, GMA, etc.) the talking heads all neglect to mention the Governor's political party when discussing this story. I remember when Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska ran into his own ethics problems not long ago, they couldn't get the words Republican Senator out of their mouths fast enough!"

I mentioned this reticence on the part of the mainstream media to indicate the Governor's party affiliation only because the reporters failure to do so was so obvious to me. Then I came across this video of a conversation between Neil Cavuto (FNC) and Tim Graham, senior editor at Newsbusters, and discovered that there is actually a term to describe this proclivity of the liberal media's continual attempt to keep the "Democratic" label separate from the scandal. It's called "dropping the D"

"This is a pattern we've seen for many years, especially when it comes to scandal. We call it drop the (D). You see stories like this [Blagojevich]," all the time NewsBusters Senior Editor Tim Graham told FNC's Neil Cavuto. While some print outlets just bury the Democratic label deep within an article, "a lot of times on television we're not seeing that [the party label] at all. We've seen that in the Blagojevich coverage. You could have watched CBS today and not found a single mention," that the indicted Illinois Governor is a Democrat, Graham added.