The other day, a liberal and I got into a discussion on the whole Party of Corruption update. She said Republicans were more corrupt than Democrats, and she cited stories from the New York Times (ugh!) showing that it was so. So, just to make myself crazy, I did some research. What I found was what you might expect: in reality, looking objectively at the issue of corruption, democrats have been charged with more corruption that Republicans. However, the media tends to ignore Democrat corruption, even when it dwarfs the current flap about Republicans. Let me give you some examples.First, on January 12 of this year, the New York Times ran another article about Tom DeLay being linked with Jack Abramoff, along with two columsn about Abramoff on the inside pages. The DeLay article was nothing but rehash, but was on page One! Meanwhile, that same day, there was a NEWS story about a former aide to Rep. William Jefferson (D-La), who pleaded guilty the previous day to bribing the Congressman. The aide in question, Brett Pfeffer, said his former boss had demanded a stake in Pfeffer's business in return for his support and that Jefferson had insisted that two of his relatives be put on Pfeffer's payroll. The FBI had been investigating this for some time and had wired conversations and raided homes
How did the Times deal with this? It appeared buried on page 28! Even more, the Times, the supposed newspaper of record, didn't even have one of their own reporters get into this true tale of corruption. No, instead they used wire reports from the AP.
Also on January 12, buried on page five of the SECOND SECTION(!), was a story that a state assemblyman who had formerly headed the Brooklyn Democratic party was sentenced to jail for receiving illegal contributions.
So, I told my friend, if Republicans are the party of corruption, why are there so many more stories about Democrats being corrupt? She said, well, this is just one day, and besides, these stories couldn't be important because they weren't on page one. When I printed off the stories and had he read them, she was shocked. Oh, but friends, I didn't stop there.
On January 23, the Times reproted on page 12 that former Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell was on trial for receiving payoffs from companies working with the city. The big news in that? The article did not mention his party even once. I looked it up--yep, a Democrat!
So, what does this mean, what is the issue? Well, it shows the media template for dealing with corruption in this country. Since Nixon, the Republicans are seen as the shadowy party, and their "corruption" gets page one splash treatment. Democrats, on the other hand, are buried on the back sections when stories of their corruption come out. So what?
Well, if one looks merely at numbers, in terms of comparative party corruption, one would have to conclude that Democrats are far more likely to be caught up in it than Republicans. For example, go to the website of the House Committee on Standards of Offical Conduct. Click on that link that says "historical documents." Then, go to a little publication titled "Historical Summary of Conduct Cases in the House of Representatives." The last time I looked at it, it had been last updated in Nov. 2004. It lists every ethics case since 1798. Here is what you find, there have been about 70 different House members who have been investigated for serious offenses over the last 30 years. Of these, only 15 were Republicans, while 55 were Democrats.
However, if you did a poll, most people would say Republicans are more corrupt, due mostly to the flawed media coverage.
However, if Americans looked beyond the ink and did the research, they would know the truth: the Democrats not only are the party of vehicular homicide killers, but it is also the home of corruption.
