The Associated Press story announcing the hiring of a new AP executive editor gives plenty of reasons for readers not to trust the once-venerable news wire.
The AP some years ago devolved from an objective news source into just another outlet for left-leaning propaganda. Even its famous AP Stylebook, long in use in most newsrooms as the supreme arbiter of proper journalistic diction, has gone disgustingly woke, meaning left-wing. For example, it now says the words “black” and “indigenous” should be capitalized when referring to race or ethnicity, but that “white” should remain lowercase. And AP says we can’t use “thug” because it supposedly has racial connotations, and it promotes the use of the non-word “ableism” to describe negative attitudes against the disabled. And so on.
Those are mere cosmetic issues, however. Much worse is the AP’s habit of taking sides in how it “reports” political issues. For just two examples from among hundreds, it portrays conservative action on voting laws as the “Republicans’ nationwide campaign to restrict access to the ballot” and describes an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council as a “corporate-backed, conservative group.” These are just examples of bias, not of being factual. You’ll never find an AP story “reporting” about the “Democrats’ nationwide campaign to eliminate longstanding voter-integrity rules.” Moreover, the AP will mention the leftist Brennan Center for Justice without giving it a single ideological modifier (not “liberal,” not “progressive,” not anything) and without identifying it as an outfit funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. Even though the Brennan Center does at least some thoughtful, well-sourced work (as ALEC does too, by the way), why is it treated neutrally when ALEC is deliberately given negative labels over its funding sources?
In that light, the AP story announcing the promotion of longtime editor Julie Pace to the job of “executive editor” reads like a carefully constructed excuse for liberal bias.
The article reads: “Breaking news will remain the backbone of the AP’s report, but journalists will quickly move to provide analysis, context and fact-checking to those stories, she said.”
Analysis? There was a time when the AP was about reporting facts and letting others decide how to assess those facts. That’s why the AP was such a staple in newsrooms nationwide: At one time, it rigorously scrubbed opinion, analysis, and bias from its offerings, so editors everywhere knew they were getting the unadorned basics without any hidden agenda. Now, though, Pace wants to “quickly” move from basic reporting to analysis, all the better to “frame” the story rather than merely relay it.
Boasting about Pace’s public profile as a “frequent on-air analyst” at multiple networks, the article celebrates the AP focusing on “impact journalism” rather than being “a bland utility.” Never mind that for old-school journalists, what made the AP so valuable was precisely that it was a bland and reliable utility that was worried only about accuracy rather than “impact.”
The article then segues into one of the typical but irrelevant asides about “a raft of leadership changes at national news organizations in the past several months,” with the kicker being that “what they all have in common is that none are white men.” As if it makes a damn bit of difference what race or gender the editor is and as if reporting by white men is inherently suspect.
Then, the article whines that “journalism is also facing a politically fueled crisis in confidence. The Pew Research Center said this week that the number of Republicans who said they have at least some trust in national news organizations has been cut in half, from 70% in 2016 to 35% this year.” Maybe Republicans are right to be distrustful.
“Fact-based journalism does not mean that all sides of an issue get an airing,” Pace said. “That means we are going to be really clear with people about what the facts are. If that lines up on one side of an issue, we are going to be really clear about that.”
And that is exactly the problem. Even the AP’s new top editor is perfectly happy with making Solomonic judgments about when it is OK to have a story that “lines up on one side of an issue.” She’s right that facts can favor one point of view over another. Nobody seriously suggests that good reporting requires an exact distribution of space to each point of view. But I don’t trust her judgment as to what’s what. Why should I? The AP, though, with its newly celebrated “analysis,” will take it upon itself to determine where the facts “line up.” And based on their track record, I suspect that AP will rarely determine that the facts “line up” on the side of any “corporate-backed, conservative” groups. Or on the side, heaven forbid, of any white men.
