The technique most often used in the press is to simply not mention the party designation of wayward Democrats, not to relabel them as Republicans.

I think what motivates me to address that statement isn't so much that lately you've been vocally accusing your opponents of ignoring "true facts" or making assertions from the gut or other places that can't be quantified...but also I read what DL had to say on Community about logic and rigorous discourse. I think we all would prefer to rely on hard facts, when we can get them, but this may be one of those cases where the truth can't be determined. You might not be wrong, but I don't think you can prove that you're right, either. You too may be speaking from the gut, Tom.

You've made the charge before, but I don't recall the evidence you presented. Likely it was a study from a "media watchdog" group with a partisan axe to grind--with all due respect, but history and statistics are on my side--that claims to have watched thousands of hours of TV news and pinned down and tabulated each and every word out of the torrent of millions. Maybe they did, but now anybody trying to verify or audit their results has to go through the same thing...at a different time, with different issues bringing different politicians into the limelight. And different context...to verify any such study, you'd have to look at the surrounding material to see if anything's been taken out of context. If a news story is about, say, the Democratic leadership in the House, it'd be tedious and redundant to keep identifying each person as a Democrat. Imputing sinister intent from the failure to religiously put a "D" or "R" in front of each and every usage of a name is a bit of a stretch, I'd say.

I can't claim I can disprove you, for the very same reasons that you can't prove it. I'd say that this has to be labelled a political urban legend for want of real evidence.