US Person makes no pretensions about his biases. If you read this blog you know where he stands. But national news organizations hold themselves out to be unbiased and objective. Some journalists doubt that can actually be achieved on a operational level. Objectivity is an aspiration since the news is written by humans who have all sorts of biases, conscious and otherwise. The wire service AP has been in existence for 160 years, and it has enormous influence over what you read or hear because its wire service is used by thousands of newspapers, radio and television broadcasters all over the world. So if a bias is detected in an AP story, that is like finding e coli in your hamburger. MoveOn.org, the progressive political action group, thinks it has found a source of biased reporting about Senator Obama at the Washington bureau of AP. Ron Fournier has recently been appointed their bureau chief. In a series of articles about the Democratic campaigns, Fournier has used syntax that is less than objective. For example[1], he characterized Obama's choice of Joe Biden, "the ultimate insider", for his running mate as "shoring up his weakness--inexperience in office and on foreign policy". He accused Hillary of "doing a passable impression of the ever-parsing former president", and questioned whether she had become "slick Hillary". In another article he accused Obama of "bordering arrogance" saying he had crossed "a line smart politicians don't cross—somewhere between 'I'm qualified to be president' and 'I'm born to be president.'" His complaints about candidate Howard Dean were even stronger: "his lack of foreign policy experience, testy temperament, policy flip-flops, campaign miscues and edgy anti-war, anti-establishment message". Fournier has not subjected Republicans to similar negative commentary. He only trashed Mitt Romney for beating McBush in the Michigan primary, calling his victory a "defeat for authenticity in politics". Perhaps because of Fournier's bias, AP has consistently turned a blind eye to McBush's flips on issues. Mild stuff compared to the blatantly partisan yellow journalism that comes out of 'Fox Spews'. However, AP's position in the journalism food chain is much higher up than Murdoch's mouth, and a different quality level is expected.
It is not Fournier's attempts at punchy prose that disturbs me, but his undisclosed overtures to right wing partisans. Karl Rove, former bunker propaganda minister, exchanged e mails with Fournier about the football/warrior hero, Pat Tillman who was shot down by his own comrades in Afganistan. Minister Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?" Fournier responded: "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."[1] This expression of partisanship (sucking up?) during an election year is considered outside the bounds of maintaining journalistic neutrality. Even though Fournier initiated the email exchange, he attempted to blow it off as just a reporter doing his job. A closer look by watchdog Media Matter's Eric Boehlert revealed that Fournier did not write any artcles on the Tillman saga. He apparently used the story as cover for contacting Rove directly. Before Fournier returned to work for AP in 2007 after a failed attempt to launch a political blog, he was contacted by McBush's people about a campaign job. Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis [2]. His McBush love goes back to 2004 when he idolized the senator in print for his military service and declared without any support that McBush was the presidential choice of independents and Democrats. In a political system driven by mass media, slanted characterizations and unfair inaccuracies can be deadly. A case in point is the long lived and erroneous factoid that Al Gore "invented" the internet. Former Republican majority leader Dick Armey issued a press release making the false claim[3], and the press corps promptly copied it ad nauseum. Dispite considerable debunking, the lie proved debilitating to Gore's election chances. Fournier calls his biased reporting, "analysis", but is in reality a disservice. AP should be responsible for feeding the facts of a story to other news outlets as fast as humanly possible. US Person and others can do the analysis, and give AP credit for the facts.
[1] www.mediamatters.org/columns/200807220006
[2] www.politico.com, July 30, 2008
[3]Gore interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition": "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our education system."