AP is in fact an administration lackey

POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Sunday, March 26, 2006 02:15
VIEWED: 1072
PAGE 1 of 1

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, March 23, 2006 3:24 PM

They fired this guy who had run AP Vermont for 27 years for posting a column to the wire by his own Sneator Pat Leahy.
Leahy is a senior democrat who has been critical of the administration, actually, he was critical of the Clinton admin too, I think he's a good guy. So does everyone on the Senate floor with the singular exception of DIck CHeney.
But your elected representative is being censored because he opposes the president, and anyone who even posts something by him to the wire is fired.
The AP is independent of the executive. Yeah, right.
If you buy that one, come up the NY, we got a nice bridge...

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060323/NEWS/603
230331/1003/NEWS02

COPILOT

Thursday, March 23, 2006 10:20 PM

More back flips and bull crap. Everytime I turn around it seems more and more is getting underhanded in the U.S.

An I carried such a torch

GINOBIFFARONI

Friday, March 24, 2006 11:32 PM

You wonder just how far control of the media goes ?

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BC6BF914-C614-45DD-9789-C519F80
F9310.htm

" The US military should say so when it pays foreign journalists for favourable news, and the defence department should review policies that let it secretly pay Iraqi media, the Pentagon's top soldier has said. "

Can any media source be trusted ?

" Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done "

The Killers

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/killers/allthesethingsthativedone.html

GEEZER

Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:48 AM

From the newspaper link you posted.

Quote:
The forced departure of the Associated Press's longtime Vermont bureau chief may be linked to his posting a partisan column by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the AP wire.

And from AP's Statement of News Values and Principles:

Quote:
It means we must be fair. Whenever we portray someone in a negative light, we must make a real effort to obtain a response from that person.

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_112905.html

Mr. Graff was apparently fired for posting on the AP wire a partisan column by Sen. Leahy critical of the President without providing an opportunity for response, thereby violating one of the AP's values and principles.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

DREAMTROVE

Saturday, March 25, 2006 4:27 AM

I don't think this is relevent. An op ed by Leahy is his own opinion. When any political commentator makes statements there's not always a rebuttal. This item is a letter form Leahy, there's no room for someone else's comments. If Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh or Fidel Castro rights an op ed piece it doesn't get a rebuttal. In short, an op ed by Leahy is not news. It's opinion.

It seems to me that if someone is censoring the Senator from Vermont, who is an elected represntative of the people, then we have a problem.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Saturday, March 25, 2006 3:21 PM

Leahy’s position with the government does not give him the right to ridicule with abandon. The AP should seek to balance any clearly partisan comment, as is their policy, and that clearly was not done in this case. As for whether that is what resulted in Graff’s resignation is debatable, but this does not make the AP a lackey of the Bush Administration, in fact all it demonstrates is the AP is not immune to the same liberal bias that plagues many other US news sources.

I did a cursory google search of articles by Christopher Graff and found not a single article that was favorable to Republicans or Republican issues. In fact, every article I found seemed to describe the Democrats and Democratic issues. Based on what Graff had to say, one might get the impression Republicans exist as a marginal influence. That was based on about 15 articles searched randomly from the net, it’s by no means a scientific evaluation, but it clearly suggests that Graff, like the ~80% of journalists who voted for Kerry, is not an unbiased news reporter. Graff's resignation may simply be in response to a AP attempt to puncture some holes in the groupthink and possibly let some fresh air into the news rooms. I think that several newspapers, including the New York Times, may be involved in similar such self-inspection.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.

Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.

-- Cicero

GEEZER

Saturday, March 25, 2006 6:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I don't think this is relevent. An op ed by Leahy is his own opinion. When any political commentator makes statements there's not always a rebuttal. This item is a letter form Leahy, there's no room for someone else's comments. If Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh or Fidel Castro rights an op ed piece it doesn't get a rebuttal. In short, an op ed by Leahy is not news. It's opinion.
It seems to me that if someone is censoring the Senator from Vermont, who is an elected represntative of the people, then we have a problem.

I've looked all over AP's website, and nowhere do they indicate that they provide a forum for partisan op-ed pieces. They provide news and feature items to their subscribers, who are generally media outlets. Carrying Sen. Leahy's political opinion, or Fidel's or Howard's or Russ's, without rebuttal is not part of their business.

If Sen. Leahy wants his opinion in print, he can do just like everyone else and send it to newspaper editorial offices for publication in their op-ed pages. The fact that he's a Senator gives him a pretty good chance of getting published.

Mr. Graff tried to do an end-run around this process by distributing it in a manner reserved for hard news and against the policies of the organization he worked for. AP pulled the piece because it was against their policy to carry such articles without rebuttal, and presumably fired Mr. Graff because he know better but put it on the wire anyway.

I realize that this is not as exciting as a grand conspiracy, but trying to make this censorship is like complaining that ESPN is censoring Sen. Leahy because it didn't broadcast his last speech.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

DREAMTROVE

Saturday, March 25, 2006 9:49 PM

Finn,

Quote:
Leahy’s position with the government does not give him the right to ridicule with abandon. The AP should seek to balance any clearly partisan comment, as is their policy, and that clearly was not done in this case.

It's an editorial, I don't think the president or anyone else has this right. I've seen editorials on the wire before, this isn't new.

Quote:
As for whether that is what resulted in Graff’s resignation is debatable,

Objectively I think not.

Quote:
but this does not make the AP a lackey of the Bush Administration,

Finn,

The case against my outlandish claim would be hard to hold up in an environment of educated intelligent people. "spin for the masses" really doesn't work. All you need to do in order to know that the AP is being an orwellian information ministry is just to have been reading it (at all) lately. By comparison, Fox News is a harsh critic of the administration.

Quote:
in fact all it demonstrates is the AP is not immune to the same liberal bias that plagues many other US news sources.

Not really. Though I'm sure lot's of liberal bias shows up in the AP, I don't think that this shows any such thing. Vermont is notably independent, and I don't think of Leahy as a far left extremist, I think of him as "one of the sane democrats." But that aside, opposing Bush is not a liberal position, supporting him is not a conservative one.

What I am pointing out here is the degeneration of the free press which is something patriotic americans should be concerned about.

Quote:
I did a cursory google search of articles by Christopher Graff and found not a single article that was favorable to Republicans or Republican issues. In fact, every article I found seemed to describe the Democrats and Democratic issues. Based on what Graff had to say, one might get the impression Republicans exist as a marginal influence.

Hmm. This was an interesting tack I didn't think of. I assumed that Mr. Graff was just doing what was natural, you get a letter from a Senator, you print it. I assumed there was no bias here at all. But the slight as I see it is against Leahy, which the administration wishes to silence.

I don't disagree with you that the press overall is still too far slanted to the left. I wasn't seeing this as a left right issue, but as one of the administration vs. the freedom of the press.

Quite frankly, you can't honestly expect that any pro-administration bias set up in the Bush admin will be a right-wing bias. I'm sure the same mechanism will manipulate the media in favor of Hillary Clinton once she is duly selected commanding-in-thief.

Quote:
That was based on about 15 articles searched randomly from the net, it’s by no means a scientific evaluation, but it clearly suggests that Graff, like the ~80% of journalists who voted for Kerry, is not an unbiased news reporter.

Sure, not arguing the point.

Quote:
Graff's resignation may simply be in response to a AP attempt to puncture some holes in the groupthink and possibly let some fresh air into the news rooms. I think that several newspapers, including the New York Times, may be involved in similar such self-inspection.

An interesting and possible idea, but in the mounting evidence of a trend of the administration to consolidate executive power, a restriction of press is not only in line with that, it is mandated by that, and the evidence that they are engaged in such practices is overwhelming and having nothing to do with national security except to the extent that national security is keeping an unchecked executive in a position of supreme power.

All of these issues concern me to a great extent because while to the existance of an executive is potentially a benefit, it is also potentially a tremendous liability. At the moment I think that abolishing the position of president would still be a tremendous boon to the country, but I'd prefer just replacing him with a different president.

Geezer,

Quote:
I've looked all over AP's website, and nowh

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GEEZER

Sunday, March 26, 2006 12:02 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
No, it's really not. The conspiracy of unchecked executive power is not something which gives me a happy, it's a reality of grave concern. Anyone who has ever paid attention to any history ever knows that an unchecked executive is not a bellweather of freedom.

I have to admit that I'm not quite sure how AP enforcing their content policy by removing a partisan editorial placed on their service in contravention of their rules, and firing the person who broke those rules by doing so, becomes a "...conspiracy of unchecked executive power."

BTW, can you post me an example of a partisan op-ed piece with an AP byline?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

DREAMTROVE

Sunday, March 26, 2006 2:15 AM

I sure they exist.