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Irritated

My colleague, Boston Herald editor Joe Dwinell, joins the righteous Jihad against the AP. Joe, at his City Desk Wired blog, calls out the Obamist Press on its “left curve,” specifically on its characterization of McCain at a Des Moines Register ed board as “irritable.”     

The Associated Press, now pitching all political news with a left curve, charges that John McCain was “irritable” during an editorial board session in Iowa.

Antsy. Brusque. Sarcastic. I gotta see this. Not wanting to be spoon-fed the AP interpretation of the world day and night, I surfed over to the video of the McCain interview on the Des Moines Register site to see for myself.

• Click here for a direct link to the paper’s gallery of videos.

I refuse to let AP drive the news bus! Go see yourself. What I’m hearing is a candidate who is serious — dead serious — about the market mess but “irritable?” How about somebody becoming a bit frustrated by the dire position the country finds itself in. Leave the jokes to Leno, Letterman and Tina.

“If I sound angry, it’s because people are angry. People are angry. They are angry. They expect more of us. But I’ll tell you what, we never miss a recess or a pay raise.” McCain says in the paper’s video.

… I hear a serious candidate. Come on AP, stick an “analysis” tag on your stories. And, for those ready to fire away, send me a link to a good Barack Obama video where he’s equally frustrated with the state of affairs and I’ll see what AP has to say!

Forget the “analysis” tag. Try a “Barack Obama will approve of this message” tag. Sort of like the “Al-Qaeda will approve of this message” tag that belongs on most of al-P’s Iraq and Afghanistan war coverage over the past seven years.

It’s one thing when the New York Times does it. The New York Times, after all, serves only those people who choose to shell out a buck and change for their daily dose of McCain bashing. MSNBC, that’s between MSNBC and its advertisers.

And it’s one thing when irritable, trip-wire Crit rants that the press agency more jiahidis prefer is nakedly partisan in this presidential race … in fact, in virtually all of its Bush coverage over the past eight years … and has abandoned the principles on which it was established 150-odd years ago. You know, the notion of non-partisan coverage that was designed to allow a pool reporter to serve client newspapers of all stripes across the nation. 

But when they manage to piss off mild-mannered, just-the-facts, fair-shake Joe …

The AP needs to ask itself “why they hate us.” The AP, with its arrogant, heavy-handed approach, every day, with every article, is only recruiting more mujahideen to the righteous Jihad against the Great Slanter.

Topics: media, pols

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:42 am on Thursday, October 2, 2008

2 Responses to “Irritated”

1. Fatty Bolger Says:
   October 2nd, 2008 at 4:05 pm

   I’m not sure how much longer AP is going to last, at least in its current form. They steal a lot of their material from staff reporters and repackage it for sale to their subscribers. Their articles are very slanted to the left, yet end up in newspapers serving even the most conservative areas, and not every paper can afford to edit their articles on a regular basis to remove the bias. So the articles end up hurting some newspapers, who still pay for them because they have to fill the pages somehow.

   It seems to me that with the internet and modern printing technology, the AP is a lot less relevant. It can’t be that hard to set up local co-ops, and I know that a lot of papers are doing that. It’s a small step from there to bigger, national co-ops that cut out the AP entirely.

2. Robert Says:
   October 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm

   “the press agency more jiahidis prefer”

   Come on Crit. Everybody knows that Al’Reuters is the press service that more mujaheddins listen too.

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