Unsaid
Talk about gall. Not the AP’s coverage of Bush’s farewell speech. They actually managed to keep the “when did you stop beating your wife” asides relatively toned down. But the AP has introduced a new feature, a sidebar to go with the Bush speech main of sort I don’t think I’ve seen before. It’s what Bush left “Unsaid.” It is an astonishing exercise, coming from a news agency that has been so selective with its facts, free with its distortions, and utterly myopic in its reporting.
Afghanistan:
Bush said: “Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored al-Qaida and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school.”
He did not say that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan has forced the U.S. to rush as many as 30,000 more troops there, seeking to turn the tide in fighting that has seen al-Qaida-linked militants and the Taliban make a comeback after initial defeats in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Iraq:
Bush said: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.”
He did not mention that violence in Iraq still persists despite improved security, that Iraq remains gripped by hostility between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, that most Americans think the war was a mistake, and that weapons of mass destruction — the original rationale for the war — were never found.
You know, I’ve tried to be diligent with the AP’s own unsaids, and it’s been a lot of work. I’m tired of constantly having to repeat the AP’s exaggerations, misrepresentations and oversights in its dismal coverage of these wars, not to mention the laziness or cowardice, sometimes hard to say which it is. Let me just say that in no small way, AP has provided comfort to the enemy on a routine basis during these nearly eight years of war. And that’s without getting into AP’s history of hiring people who have engaged in highly questionable activities, and relying on sources whose information proved false and whose existence could never be proven. Here are a few links:
Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?
War Is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?)
Veterans:
Bush said: “Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled.”
He did not say that embarrassing disclosures of shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities in 2007 forced his administration to retool the system of care for veterans.
AP fails to mention that its interest in veterans largely has been in using them as political brickbats, while disparaging what active duty soldiers in the field were trying to accomplish, blaming them for deaths that were often the result of enemy tactics and accidents of war, leaping on any suggestion of a war crime and second-guessing their every move, while praising their enemies, ignoring their enemies’ misdeeds, and treating terrorists as free fighters.
AP whacks Bush for failing to kick himself on education and the economy. I’m afraid I haven’t been a scholar of AP’s reportage in these areas, though I’m confident, given how wretched the agency’s performance is in other areas, that it sucks as much there, too. Moving on.
Katrina:
Bush mentioned Hurricane Katrina only once in this speech, praising Tony Recasner, “a principal who opened a new charter school from the ruins” of the storm.
He did not say that his government’s response to the worst natural disaster in U.S. history included key failures, as even a White House report later found.
AP doesn’t bother to mention that the massive hurricane caused systems to fail that had been neglected by multiple administrations, Democratic and Republican, and that most of the serious problems Katrina caused were greatly exacerbated by corrupt and inept Democratic governance, and criminal activity.
OK, a little AP politics. It’s a little off the Bush “unsaid” topic, but it’s more stuff that AP has in the recent past left unsaid, distorted, or just made up:
Ayers Palship Stretch Repudiated
Help me out. Does that look maybe a little obsessive? You try reading this poor excuse for a news agency’s tripe almost every night for years.
OK, all that said, this “Unsaid” thing could actually be a positive development, if the AP plans to be evenhanded about it. I’d like to see this exercise applied to Obama’s inaugural speech, and everything else he says over the next four years. Also, pretty much anything that comes out of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s mouths. Unfortunately, the AP has generally left the unsaid unsaid when it comes pols of a certain stripe. I’ve seen nothing in years to indicate the AP plans to be evehanded about anything.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:23 pm Comments (4) on Thursday, January 15, 2009
4 Responses to “Unsaid”
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January 16th, 2009 at 7:33 am
AP is shedding members almost as fast as the Seattle P-I shed readers.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
AP is partly (no, make that largely) to blame for the ever-increasing demise of newspapers everywhere. They are killing the very industry that was supposed to keep us informed, because no one can trust what they report.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Unbelievable. Really, the AP is just turning into a joke.
January 17th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Keep it up Jules. AP needs to go down.