After a few months of abstinence I finally found something blogworthy. It seems that every time I open up an AP article I am bombarded with opinions and unattributed claims. This is a very bad thing because AP is supposedly a news service — meaning it is supposed to be straight up news reporting — all objective — and absolutely no opinion whatsoever.
Yesterday I stumbled upon this article which leads:
WASHINGTON – No, maybe he can’t. President Barack Obama, who insisted he would succeed where other presidents had failed to fix the nation’s health care system, now concedes the effort may die in Congress.
The president’s newly conflicting signals could frustrate Democratic lawmakers who are hungry for guidance from the White House as they try to salvage the effort to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and hold down spiraling medical costs.
There are a few assumptions being made in this lead. The first is that the health care system was broken and that previous presidents tried to *fix* it. How did the idea that our health care system is broken and in need of a legislative solution become a fact?
Today I had a major L-O-L when I came upon this AP article featured on Yahoo’s homepage. What got me the most was the picture they used of Sarah Palin at the Nashville Tea Party Meeting.
ROOOOOOOOOOOAR!!!!! I AM SARAH PALIN! (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)
Seriously? Associated Press: you are the largest global news network dedicated to “providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed,” yet you couldn’t take a picture of Sarah Palin that doesn’t make her look constipated — or evil? You couldn’t use a better shot?
Aside from that, there are many other things misleading (i.e. the headline reads “Palin tells ‘Tea Party’: It’s revolution time”) and portions of the article are pure unadulterated opinion but this strikes me the most:
Indeed, Republican observers say she’s seemingly done more lately to establish herself as a political celebrity focused on publicity rather than a political candidate focused on policy.
What is the identity of the alleged ‘Republican observers’? Hey — as Glenn Beck always says — I’m just saying … With those standards an AP reporter could easily write absolutely anything and attribute it to anonymous sources.
P.S. I found this great little blog post concerning AP’s increasingly subjective reporting on editorsweblog.org:
“Accountability Journalism”: AP blurs opinion and news
Posted by Sarah Schewe on July 15, 2008 at 11:01 AMWith new ledes like, “John McCain calls himself an underdog. That may be an understatement,” and “I miss Hillary,” the Associated Press style is experiencing unprecedented change.
Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, is encouraging news pieces to incorporate first-person writing and use emotive language; Fournier defends the changes as “accountability journalism.”
Accountability journalism is “provocative without being partisan,” said Fournier. “Truth-tellers without being editorial writers.” The bureau chief claims this form of journalism liberates both journalists and the truth.
Not all agree. “The problem,” says James Taranto, the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web columnist, “is that while you can do opinion journalism and incorporate reporting into it, you can’t say you’re doing straight reporting, and then add opinion to that.”
Fournier is receiving some pushback not only outside the organization, but also from his own staff; some feel the changes stray from the AP’s mission of “delivering fast, unbiased news.”
According to Politco, “At times, Fournier has pulled back. He wanted to open a news analysis…in May with, ‘The Democratic presidential race is over’ … After some back and forth, the reporters won out with ‘The Democratic presidential race is all but over.’”
“The AP has always been a just-the-facts type of organization,” an AP staffer explained. “I think there’s mixed feelings — there’s reluctance.”
