It's Not Slant, It's Competence

The News Media has a few problems, well documented by Media matters, Daily Howler, the late, great Media Whores Online, and many, many others. Bias and slant is a tough nut to crack, one whose solution should to my mind involve purchases by liberals, progressives, Democrats, Blue Companies, whatever it takes. Hell, I'd like to see a blogger mutual fund, funded by online investments, that buys publicly traded corporations in order to put pressure on their boards at the least, to do their jobs as envisioned by the Framers, that as a Free Press, not as an Embedded Press.

I know, complicated, potentially divisive, don't invest with family members, who's going to run it, who makes decisions, and so on. But there's another area where the News Media fails miserably, competence.

Take this AP article, not just the headline, but the lede as well.

Senators sat down Friday with Robert Gates for the first time since President Bush selected him to become the next defense secretary, and said they would push for him to be confirmed by the end of the year.

But it's not "Senators" now is it? No, it's Republican Senators. And that makes a huge difference in meaning. One implies bipartisan acceptence, the other partisanship. And I say that this is the failure of the reporter as much as the editor to do their stinking job and report the news accurately and factually.

While it may be true, likely really, that the Democrats will continue to fail in their understanding of the lessons of 11/7, that's outside the scope of this article. So send AP a note calling for accuracy in reporting. Here's their e-mail, info@ap.org, the article is by Anne Plummer Flaherty, and titled "Senators to push for Gates confirmation"