Also see the compare-and-contrast example in the final paragraph.

A city councilman in Lorain, Ohio, a city of about 75,000 west of Cleveland, was arrested during a prostitution sting on Friday.

Of the six stories I found covering the event (the Google News search is for May 22-26), only one referred to the political party of councilman Dennis Flores, who is a Democrat (scroll down to “Second Ward Council;” HT to an e-mailer).

The Cleveland Plain Dealer set the tone for ignoring Flores’s party ID, with a Saturday Breaking Metro Blog entry and Sunday story, which presumably made the print edition. Each story notes that Flores “serves as captain of his block watch.”

While two others who gave the story attention without providing a party identification for Flores could perhaps be excused because they only gave it five or six paragraphs (specifically, Cleveland’s WEWS and WKYC.com), writer Scott Allyn at the Morning Journal, whose main office is in Lorain, clearly had to go out of his way to avoid naming Flores’s party. In the process, he also failed to identify the party affiliation of the mayor and two other city council members:

(Mayor Anthony) Krasienko said he was disappointed in Councilman Flores.

”I believe that because we’re public officials, we’re held to a higher standard,” he said. ”You have to do everything you can to keep the public’s trust in mind. Councilman Flores has been a good advocate for his ward and many public projects. Unfortunately, this (Flores’ arrest) will overshadow a lot of good he had done for the community.”

Krasienko said his immediate staff knows they will be asked to resign if they are ever caught driving while intoxicated, or they’ll be fired.

”We have to do everything we can to retain the public’s trust and uphold the integerity of the offices we hold,” he said.

Lorain Councilman at large Dan Given said he was shocked by Flores’ arrest.

”I’m taken aback,” Given said. ”I have no idea what the next step is. He’ll have to have his day in court. For as long as I’ve been on council, nobody that I have served with has had any kind of run-in with the law.”

Lorain Councilwoman at large Anne Molnar said she would not ask Flores to step down from council.

”He made one mistake and none of us are perfect people,” Molnar said. ”He has to go to court and rectify it. I don’t like what he did, but I don’t feel he needs to step down. If it was a felony it would be a different story. But he has done a lot of good in the community.’

Jason Hawk at the Chronicle Telegram, which is based in Elyria, broke the ice early Sunday morning in the ninth paragraph of his 21-paragraph story. By doing so, he showed everyone before him, especially the Morning Journal, that Flores’s party affiliation has been a relevant factor all along, simply because his party has the problem of what to do about him:

But if Flores is convicted of solicitation, there could be tremendous political pressure for him to give up his seat, Lorain Democratic Party Chair Tony Giardini said.

“Nobody is perfect, and everybody has issues, but when you’re a public official — like it or not — you’re going to be held to a higher standard,” Giardini said. “You can’t have councilpeople behaving that way.”

He said the arrest could also cause constituents to lose faith in Flores’ ability to make moral decisions.

Even though it’s a misdemeanor, from the public’s perspective it’s much more serious, he said.

Ohioans are very sensitive about the conduct of elected officials since the resignation of former state Rep. Matthew Barrett and former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, Giardini said.

Barrett resigned in April, about six months after a nude photo appeared on a computer during a talk to a high school government class. After resisting mightily for about ten days, Dann resigned on May 14 “amid the scandal of a sexual harassment investigation in his office and his extramarital affair.”

Barrett and Dann also served as Democrats, which Hawk did not note.

For compare-and-contrast purposes — I link you to the Associated Press’s coverage of New York Congressman Vito Fossella’s resignation, where the word “Republican” appears ten times in the first nine paragraphs. I would suggest that the differences in the facts and circumstances are nowhere near enough to explain the party-identification disparities between Fossella and Flores.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From About.com (late addition — this link at usmemorialday.org):

It was 1866 and the United States was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers came home, some with missing limbs, and all with stories to tell. Henry Welles, a drugstore owner in Waterloo, New York, heard the stories and had an idea. He suggested that all the shops in town close for one day to honor the soldiers who were killed in the Civil War and were buried in the Waterloo cemetery. On the morning of May 5, the townspeople placed flowers, wreaths and crosses on the graves of the Northern soldiers in the cemetery. At about the same time, Retired Major General Jonathan A. Logan planned another ceremony, this time for the soldiers who survived the war. He led the veterans through town to the cemetery to decorate their comrades’ graves with flags. It was not a happy celebration, but a memorial. The townspeople called it Decoration Day.

In Retired Major General Logan’s proclamation of Memorial Day, he declared:

“The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

The two ceremonies were joined in 1868, and northern states commemorated the day on May 30. The southern states commemorated their war dead on different days. Children read poems and sang civil war songs and veterans came to school wearing their medals and uniforms to tell students about the Civil War. Then the veterans marched through their home towns followed by the townspeople to the cemetery. They decorated graves and took photographs of soldiers next to American flags. Rifles were shot in the air as a salute to the northern soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States together.

In 1882, the name was changed to Memorial Day and soldiers who had died in previous wars were honored as well. In the northern United States, it was designated a public holiday. In 1971, along with other holidays, President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.

Cities all around the United States hold their own ceremonies on the last Monday in May to pay respect to the men and women who have died in wars or in the service of their country.