Nowhere in the New York Times’ 1,300-word article on Senator Bob Menendez’s bribery trial, as originally published earlier this week, was there mention of the senator’s party affiliation. Because Menendez is a Democrat, critics of the paper were quick to point out that the Times’ omission is indicative of its political bias. Nick Corasaniti, the author of the report, disagreed, tweeting that the error was “just an oversight on my part after drafts.” (The Times has since added the affiliation.)
The omission could have been an oversight, but that’s a pretty bad excuse. Including party affiliations is generally standard practice in journalism. It’s enshrined in the AP Stylebook — the bible of journalistic style — and the Times’ own style manual. Forgetting party affiliation is a pretty big mistake, especially “after drafts” and what must be a rigorous editorial process.
In fact, the Times has a long history of leaving out party affiliations when covering stories that don’t reflect well on liberal groups or individuals. Back in 2013, for example, the Times omitted the party affiliation of Democratic poster boy and Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick when he was sentenced to 28 years in a federal corruption case. And the paper applies political labels selectively in run-of-the-mill stories as well. In an op-ed yesterday, the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams rounded up some of these examples: Last week, the Times mentioned “the conservative” American Enterprise Institute without mentioning the left-leaning orientation of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in the same article. Only two days before that, they labelled the Washington Examiner “conservative” and left the Brennan Center for Justice’s political leanings unidentified.
While it’s possible that Corasaniti and his editors purposely kept Menendez’s party affiliation out of the article, it’s far more likely that the Times’ liberal bias has permeated their newsroom to such a degree that their editors and reporters don’t even notice it anymore. Leaving a left-leaning affiliation off of a group like Urban-Brookings makes sense because to the staff it seems mainstream and unbiased. Conservative groups like AEI, though, are alien and need further identification.
All of which is what makes it hard to imagine that his party affiliation would slip the minds of a New York Times reporter and editor had Menendez been a Republican.