CNN.com posted article with derisive term “Democrat Party,” but original AP article used “Democrats”

Written by Rob Dietz & Kurt Donaldson

Published

An October 30 Associated Press article about the attention Arab governments are giving to the U.S. congressional elections referred to the Democratic Party as “Democrats,” but a version of the article on CNN.com, since corrected, replaced the word “Democrats” with the phrase “Democrat Party.” As Media Matters for America noted, Republicans have employed the word “Democrat” as an adjective to describe things or people of, or relating to, the Democratic Party -- including referring to the “Democrat” Party itself, even though that is not the party's name. The ungrammatical conversion of the noun “Democrat” to an adjective was the brainchild of Republican partisans, presumably in an attempt to deny the opposing party the claim to being “democratic” -- or in the words of New Yorker magazine senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg, “to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation.” In the early 1990s, apparently due largely to the urgings of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the use of the word “Democrat” as an adjective became near-universal among Republicans.

From the October 30 AP article, as contained in the Nexis database, and as posted on news.yahoo.com, and many other websites:

Many Arab officials question, however, whether the Democrats have better answers to the region's problems. They consider the Democrats traditionally more supportive of Israel than the GOP is.

From the October 30 CNN.com article

Many Arab officials question, however, whether the Democrat Party has better answers to the region's problems. They consider the Democrats historically more supportive of Israel than the GOP is.

The photo accompanying the CNN.com article also contained the phrase “Democrat Party” in the caption:

CNN.com has since changed the article on its webpage to replace the word “Democrat” with “Democratic” in the body of the article and has also removed the reference to “Democrat” in the caption to the photo. CNN.com has not noted or explained the correction. KLTV, a Texas television station serving the Tyler, Longview, and Jacksonville areas also posted a version of the AP story on its website with the phrase “Democrat Party” in the text of the article. To date, the article on the KLTV website has not been corrected.