Saturday, June 24, 2006

AP/Reuters Watch 6/24

A Flares feature which takes the Associated Press declaration in its

STATEMENT OF NEWS VALUES AND PRINCIPLES:

"we abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions"

to heart and offers a helping hand by pointing out egregious examples of abhorrent practice as they occur.

Day after day after day.

Examples found by readers and posted in comments will be placed in the main post with credit.

All Flares contributors are invited to edit and/or update AP/Reuters Watch posts.

NOTE: Stories at AP and Reuters are updated throughout the day. Some of their updates may obviate criticism made here.
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John Solomon writes a very slick piece that glides over a very important element in the story
"according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by The Associated Press."
Who approved the disclosure of evidence to the AP and why was it done at this time? Solomon does not furnish the name of the Democrats who furnished him with the emails and DoJ might wish to have a chat with some "prosecutors" who felt such a deep need to share. Additionally, although the propaganda piece is artful in making suggestions, it is curious that no emails between Norquist and actual administration officials are produced or quoted. There is no doubt that Abramoff and Norquist traded on their ability to gain access to admionistration officials. There is absolutely no proof that any administration official traded access for cash, much less that the Executive intervened on behalf of any of Abramoff's clients.

If Solomon had such proof he would have a story rather than just another shoddy AP hit piece.
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Robert Tanner continues APs war on the US military. There is a bit of balance to the article but the writer might have provided some reference to the number of deaths caused by AP "stringers" AKA provacateurs who have managed to be so close when al Queada or the insurgents commit acts of terrorism. But that would be ratting on an ally, so we won't be hearing about it.
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Tom Baum reveals much more than he intends in his "analysis" with the use of "Bush's war on terrorism is an open-ended one." I thought it was the United States that was at war based upon a resolution of Congress.
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Don Surber: ACLU creates privacy for financial records; wonder how that affects the IRS presents another view somewhat in contrast to the AP handwringer above. Don is a great reminder that objective journalism still exists. Perhaps not at the NYT or AP but then they are not representative of journalism as a whole.
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was listening to the radio today and I heard a report on how 15 soliders had died in Iraq this week and I thought, they either do not have enough to talk about or they are trying to remind us all that despite the fact that there have some positive reports from Iraq everything still sucks all the time.

Casualties are still down compared with last year, but they are higher than March which was only 33. But this week has seen a bunch of rids and AlQaida arrests too so until we withdraw there will be weeks like this.