Eric Boehlert has written a terrific column about the AP's "Ron Fournier problem," here. He does the kind of digging that is so rare both in the MSM and in most of the blogosphere to show why Fournier's suck-up comments to Karl Rove were not evidence of a reporter's mere "breeziness" but of a mindset that is reflected in Fournier's and AP's coverage; one that has the effect of perverting the truth and misleading AP's readers.
Boehlert piles up the evidence on this point, but I would like to suggest that the reason it has gone largely unnoticed is that it is par for the course among the so-called "Gang of 500." If you read Mark Halperin's page at Time or the current incarnation of The Note, you will find all kinds of Rovian assumptions about politics underlying the coverage; assumptions that are largely anathema to most Americans but embraced by the Beltway MSM as if written on tablets and handed down at Mount Sinai. (Halperin often gives evidence of having undergone a Rovian mind-meld.) I read The Note every day, and every day I notice the deep-seated bias of the sources that are considered credible. Following the requisite advertisements for ABC's correspondents, Commentary's awful blog, taken seriously nowhere else on Earth as far as I can tell, is usually cited, as is National Review and, of course, the lunatics at the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Robert Novak -- evidently played again as a patsy by McCain and Co. this week -- is treated as a credible source. But do you see The American Prospect, Salon, Media Matters, The Nation, Rick Hertzberg's New Yorker "Comments," In These Times, The Washington Monthly, Josh Marshall, Yglesias, Atrios, Kos, etc, treated in this fashion? I sure don't think that anyone would argue that the judgment of those cited daily by The Note has proven superior to those it ignores. Who predicted the catastrophe that was George W. Bush? Who predicted the war would be a disaster? Who was on board with Obama when the establishment press proved completely clueless? Why is the surge being reported as an undeniable success when it still has not accomplished most of the things it was promised to do and has likely accomplished nothing that will last once its unsustainable numbers are drawn down?
What about this story this morning, for instance? I could go on forever about this, but the mindset that Fournier has revealed rules the discourse. The MSM was wrong about most things in just the fashion that the Bush administration was; and that's apparently the way they like it.
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To read the rest of Altercation, click here.