I've written about the AP before, and how they make me sick. The former diary was inspired by an editorandpublisher.com story titled "AP Asks: Why So Many Upset by Iraq Death Toll?".
For several years now, I've given myself a little test. When I peruse news headlines, I can almost always guess which ones will be from the Associated Press.
For the millions of people in this country who get their news from Yahoo, well, they are woefully misinformed thanks to the AP.
Because, you see, tonight the headline reads:
"Plame sheds little light in leak case"
Think of the literally countless ways they COULD have headlined that story. But no. The headline they CHOSE is that "Plame sheds little light". Is that a compelling headline that makes you want to read the story? Hell no, it's a headline that is deliberately chosen in order to make readers skip over the story and ignore it.
Let's take this piece of piss-yellow "journalism" apart and see just how incredibly biased it is, shall we?
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 45 minutes ago
WASHINGTON -
Valerie Plame put a glamorous face and a personal story to Democrats' criticism of the Bush administration Friday ...
So right off the bat, this entire story, according to the AP, is about nothing more than Democrats criticism of the Bush administration.
It's NOT about outing a covert CIA operative, a decidedly treasonous act, an act which she could describe whereas "I was betrayed by my own government". No. To the AP, this is about nothing but Democrats criticism of the Bush administration.
What a crock of steaming stinking crap.
It gets worse:
Still, Plame's appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was a moment of political theater that dramatized Democrats' drive to use their control of Congress to expose what they see as White House efforts to intimidate dissenters.
Again, no facts here. It's all about the Democrats "drive" to "use their control of Congress" to "expose what they see as White House efforts to intimidate dissenters.
And of course the whole Plame affair is just "political theater". It has nothing to do with intelligence operations vital to the national scurity of the United States being destroyed, nothing to do with entire networks of covert operatatives being exposed and put in mortal danger, their years of work suddenly shot to hell.
No, it's just political theater from the democrats who are "using" their new position to expose "what they see" (presumably nobody else sees it, just the Democrats, and they must be HALLUCINATING).
Are you as disgusted as I am yet? How about we keep going?
Who's the first person who gets to offer commentary in this article?
DING DING DING -- you guessed it -- a Republican! And here it is:
Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the committee's senior Republican, called the session a partisan hearing that would do little to illuminate how Plame's identity came to be exposed or how such disclosures could be prevented.
Right. The hearing was a complete waste of time. Nothing to see here. Move along.
"It's a terrible thing that any CIA operative would be outed," Davis said. But "there's no evidence here that the people that were outing this and pursuing this had knowledge of the covert status."
Pure Bushian talking point. Pure bullshit. Why is this even in an article which is supposed to reports FACTS?
Then they go on to call her a liar:
"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority," she said.
That conflicts with senior officials at the CIA and State Department, who testified during Libby's trial and told Congress that Plame recommended Wilson for the trip.
That's a pure smear. "Senior officials" at the State Department and the CIA, both departments which fall under the Executive Branch of the government and therefore Bush's jurisdiction, where it has been made clear that all work "at the pleasure of the President"?
They finish the article by referring simply to her star quality and the fact that many people went all ga-ga over her appearance, and they compare her to a professional athlete.
Even a member of Congress confessed to being a bit star-struck.
"If I seem a little nervous, I've never questioned a spy before," Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (news, bio, voting record), R-Ga. said. "I was here during the steroid hearings, too, and I don't think any of those baseball stars got this kind of media attention that you're getting today."
Yeah. This is equivalent to the "steroid hearings". Sure.
Once again, the entire thrust of the article is "nothing to see here, move along". It's the AP's modus operandi of the last five years at least.
And it's what millions of people who get their news from Yahoo saw today.
I don't know why I bother doing this, because obviously they don't give a flying fart what anybody thinks of them. It is obvious that they, too serve "at the pleasure of the President".
This is pure, Pravda-esque propaganda. What's so sickening about it is that we've become so used to this kind of thing that most people don't even notice it anymore. They know that, and they keep ratcheting up the propagandistic qualities of their stories. This one is particularly transparent, if one uses any objectivity AT ALL.
Makes me sick. How do we stop it? I don't know. Bust them on it, call them on it, at the same time ignore it? If anyone has any ideas, I'd sure love to hear them. They abuse the First Amendment, the right to "free speech" in order to lie, lie, and lie some more.
It's just plain wrong.
