Is the Associated Press Good for America?
Lately, the Associated Press (AP) has been the elephant in the newsroom. At face value, the AP seems like a good thing, allowing newspapers to pool their resources to keep costs of reporting non-local news low. But it has always been of questionable value to news consumers, reducing competition among newspapers. And while in the past, membership had its privileges, these days the AP is looking more and more like a competitor that is putting its members out of business.
The AP started out innocently enough, as a clever scheme that seemed like a win-win for newspapers and their readers. NY papers formed this not-for-profit to pool their resources to get news from Europe faster. Knowing that American-bound ships from Europe arrive earlier in more easterly Halifax than NY, the papers dispatched boats from nearby Boston to greet the ships there, collect European news from onboard newspapers and passengers, then telegraph it to NY.
Unfortunately, this benign-sounding scheme had a dark side — it transformed newspapers that had previously been competitors into collaborators. And it didn’t take long before they became colluders, working to snuff out non-member newspapers. The AP papers shrewdly signed an agreement giving telegraph-dominating Western Union exclusive rights to their telegraph business in exchange for higher fees for all other news providers. The AP also drafted bylaws that essentially gave its members veto power over admission of would-be competitors in their local markets.
One prominent American deeply concerned about the AP’s actions was E.W. Scripps, founder of the first newspaper chain. He said that the AP’s “plan was to establish a monopoly pure and simple,” and that it would “make it impossible for anyone else to start a newspaper in an AP member’s town.” He sought to counter it by creating his own competitive wire service, the United Press (now UPI). Later he said, “I believe the most valuable service I have rendered to my country has been that of thwarting the plans of greater, abler, and richer men than myself to establish a monopoly of news in the United States, and hence a dominating influence over all the newspapers of the country.” He said he formed the UPI “to secure freedom of the press in this country,” from an AP that sought to take it away. Despite early successes, the UPI struggled, did not break the AP’s monopoly, and collapsed in recent times with 7 different owners between 1992 and 2000. It is now a holding of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, which also owns the Washington Times.
Marshall Field III, grandson of the founder of the department store of the same name, also challenged the AP monopoly with mixed results. He tried to launch the Chicago Sun in 1941, but struggled because AP member Chicago Tribune blocked his membership, freezing him out of the ultra low-cost news available to members. Field took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the AP in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Court in its decision quoted legendary appellate judge Learned Hand, who wrote of the dangers of AP’s monopoly: “In the production of news every step involves the conscious intervention of some news gatherer, and two accounts of the same event will never be the same. … For these reasons it is impossible to treat two news services as interchangeable, and to deprive a paper of the benefit of any service of the first rating is to deprive the reading public of means of information which it should have; it is only by cross-lights from varying directions that full illumination can be secured.”
Unfortunately, the AP’s legal defeat led to no discernible increase in competition among newspapers. Not a single, financially viable paper has been launched in the more than 60 years since the decision.
But the real problem is not the number of newspapers we now have, but that they refuse to compete with each other, a symptom of the AP-created culture of collaboration over competition. For example, in any other business, if there were a highly successful paper in one city, it would be natural for it to expand to a nearby city to dethrone the leader. But as members of the same AP network, papers assume their cities belong to them, and no other member has the right to invade it. Even if a neighboring paper did invade, the AP network makes it nearly impossible for them to succeed through competition because all papers are essentially running the same stories anyway.
The end result of the AP network has been the creation of a news supply chain that reliably turns out monolithic, center-left news. Each evening, the New York Times and Washington Post coordinate their stories, creating what is erroneously referred to as the “national conversation,” but is really how the world looks to editors writing for audiences in the nation’s liberal centers of money and power. These stories are then slavishly followed by the TV networks, spread by the NY Times, Washington Post, and AP news services to metro papers, whose stories are, in turn, slavishly repeated by local TV stations.
This AP-supported journalism culture deprives Americans of their birthright as codified by the Founding Fathers. The purpose of the First Amendment was to establish a country with maximum free expression and debate — a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas. Jefferson himself created a partisan paper to challenge Alexander Hamilton’s partisan Federalist newspaper. The concept of a single set of news stories and angles is the antithesis of the Founders’ vision.
But lately, the AP hasn’t been working so well for its members either. Before there was an Internet, AP member papers could freely share their stories amongst themselves without worrying that their readers could access them from other sources. Now that the Internet allows readers to find AP stories from many different sites, local papers are left with little content that appears to be exclusive, and thus little reason for their readers to subscribe.
Worse still, in a plot reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein, the AP, which was created by its member papers, has turned on its masters in at least three ways. First, while its members’ businesses are shrinking, the AP has used their fees to mushroom into a huge, full-service news outlet with more than 4,000 employees working in more than 240 bureaus worldwide. Second, last September after AP members made the foolish complaint that Google News was not paying them for words in the brief synopses linking to their articles, the AP made a deal with Google News to feature the AP’s version of the story, and ignore similar stories at the members’ own sites — a move that, no doubt, has cost members a good deal of online traffic. And just recently, the AP launched a program to make its stories available on iPhones,
preempting its members’ necessary efforts to restore their ability to generate and deliver their own, valuable original content.
AP members are beginning to recognize these problems, most recently demonstrated by a network of Ohio
papers who are cutting the AP out of their statewide stories in favor of a collaboration of their own.
The members seem to have only two choices. Either they will allow the AP to emerge with monopoly-scale control of the big national and international stories, presumably supported by advertising in lieu of member fees, or they will use their board of director seats to take control of their creation and restructure it to meet their needs. But so far, the AP members seem willing to let sleeping elephants lie.
Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”
Excellent article…we’re really not much different than any non-democratic society, ‘though we’re much more subtle and sneaky about it. Thanks for your wonderful contribution to society, AP; you’ve made the US that much better to live in, haven’t you? Our founding fathers would be as proud of you as they would be of today’s flock of self-serving politicians.
Steve Boriss has written many terrific articles on this website and again this is a fine piece of work.
From competitor to collaborator to colluder, wow. That sums up the news conspirator AP very succinctly. An unbiased story never makes it out alive from their desks.
We as Americans, as an obligation, need to pay closer attention to the First Amendment and ensure that the internet remains a relatively free and open medium. We also need to ensure that radio remains as unregulated as possible. We do not need a “Fairness Doctrine” because we already have a “Constitution.” It is befuddlng that it is the left that is behind most of this government regulation of information. While we have arguments over whether or not a piece of artwork crosses a certain line, or whether what someone says is “hate speech” or not our most basic rights are being taken out from under us. Witness the MSM’s undeniable protection of Barack Obama. In this country there should be no such legislation containing the word “hate.” Is it an ugly word? Yes. Is it a despicable attitude? Yes. Is it protected under the constitution? Most definitely yes. It is a social issue that has absolutely no place in government. It is an ugly link in the chain of freedom that must remain to preserve our beautiful abilty to be America.
Great article! I wonder if the demise of the “national” newspapers like the NY Times, Washington Post and LA Times, if the AP will emerge as a sole source of news in the US? I would like to know who owns AP. Is it a publicly held company?
I was told it was owned by a Saudi company but I cannot find any information online about who owns it. Interesting, no? If true, it explains a lot.
Mike,
I think that if things stay on their current course, the AP is likely to start resembling the BBC, the very dominant, government-friendly news outlet in the UK. Thankfully, the Internet will provide lots of competition and we are learning every day how little most Americans enjoy the monolithic center-left news we’ve been getting from them and their members. The AP is a not-for-profit owned and controlled by member newspapers. I continue to be puzzled why they are letting the AP destroy their businesses, and suspect sooner or later there will be a correction.
al-AP and the MSM are as dangerous as the terrorists. The only reason people still don’t see through the Democrat Party is because the media is their right arm. Why else would libs hate talk radio, blogs and Fox News so much. Without the media—PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, all big city papers—the Democrat Party would be dead. After all, how else can you survive slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, KKK and horrible president after horrible president (and now Obama!) and still come out looking decent? Lies. Think about how the Dems somehow have most Americans believing “the parties switched in the 60s” and suddenly they cared about black people?
Do they really think Democrats, who grew up hating blacks their entire lives, would suddenly embrace them in 1964… and that Republicans who supported civil rights since 1854 and grew up opposing Jim Crow, the KKK, and segregation would suddenly hate blacks? To rational people, that makes no sense.
School administrators who hated blacks before Brown vs. Board of Education (like those in Los Angeles) still hated them after being forced to accept de-segregation. The present state of Democrat-controlled public education systems proves how well the so-called shift worked. George Wallace would be very proud of the way Democrats continue their proud tradition of destroying young black minds today.
Further proof of black cynicism and contempt is manifested by the way they support Uncle Toms like Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, who herd their incompetent black flock to the Democrat fold, while deriding genuine intellectuals like Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell. It has been this way since Arthur Mitchell (the Democrat’s first congressional candidate) was elected in 1936. Democrats loved him because he was willing to marginalize the NAACP. Democrats have since populated it with their own obedient racial hucksters.
Excellent point! I never looked at it that way before.
Sadly, not only does the Left not think there is a liberal, lazy bias, they think the media is conservative. This from a friend to whom I sent this article this morning. Note this man is a socialist who “left the Democratic Party when they became too conservative” for him:
“This guy is way off. The BIGGEST lie (on ALL of us) is that there’s a left-leaning bias to the media. Nothing could be more wrong. The media is conservative. If the media were honest, we’d never have allowed Bush to take us into war and he’d be sitting in the Hague on War Crimes…”
Hmm…. I guess, by that absurd logic, this public school teacher would have EVERY US President in The Hague since all have, at some point to some degree, sent troops somewhere, often “to die.”
Silly folks, and dangerous since, like this guy, many of them educated our children.
One of the worst aspects of the American press a foreigner usually notices is this Associated Press monopoly that reminds one unpleasantly of TASS,IZVESTIA,and their ilk of the Cold War era.The same onesided ideological slant and the same intent to brainwash are distressingly evident in the typical reports of AP.AP’s latest report screams that children are starving in America!It is a highly massaged thing about the increased use of food stamps in the country.The same story that made The Independent of U.K shout about the return of the Great Depression to the U.S.Is there no legal recourse to break up this AP monopoly?
AJ, I was once puzzled by folks on the Left like your friend. But I’ve decided they are actually right, and so are we. The Press isn’t actually “Left” — they are center-left and establishment friendly. And they only speak in that single voice. So, if you are left of center-left they seem right and if you are middle to right they seem left. And for all those who don’t agree with the establishment position, they are pro-establishment. You might be surprised by the allies I have on the left. But why not? I support a multitude of voices competing in a freewheeling marketplace of ideas.
Good piece, but when you write:
Not a single, financially viable paper has been launched in the more than 60 years since the decision.
I think you may have forgotten about USA Today.
Fair enough point, Steve.
Since this article was thorough and excellent, I’ll defer to your assessment. I’m fair. Thanks.
My all-time favorite political cartoon dates back to a couple of decades ago. It shows an American explaining our politics to a man from Eastern Europe. “Well sure,” he says, “the government lies.
And the newspapers lie. But in a democracy they aren’t the same lies.”
The AP has become very closely allied with a certain political party. Pretty soon they may be the same lies.
Rush Limbaugh frequently does spots on his show where he puts together audio clips taken from the various television reporters and pundits regarding a certain event. It is extremely revealing. All the reporters are using the exact same words! That they are a bunch of mindless parrots could not be more obvious. It is fightening how well all the news outlets march in step. It’s absolutely Orwellian.
The AP is very, very bad for America.
Reuters started about the same time as AP: mid 19th century.
I first became aware of this Reuters/AP stranglehold on the news when there was a murder on Haifa Street in Baghdad: a car with election workers was stopped, the workers were dragged out of the car, murdered, and life went on. Photos were taken of this event. Richard of Belmont Club noted that the photo thing showed every sign of being a set-up… ie, the election workers were killed BECAUSE the photographer was an AP stringer, whose photo would have millions of readers around the world.
Anyway, I found that the board members of AP own strings of newspapers through the US heartland, exactly the areas that are providing most of American soldiers in Iraq. I send a package of information to each of the Board members (one of whom, by the way, owns newspapers in Tennessee).. and of course received no answer. These Board Members must be very rich: according to a recent remark by John Podhoretz, the profit margin on such newspapers have been 20 to 30%. However, this is disappearing.
There is hope: Drudgereport has 600 MILLION hits per month. Craigslist and others like it (ie, ebay, etc) are killing the newspapers’ prime money maker: classified ads. I don’t know what Pajamas Media has right now, but it is getting better all the time, and supports independent reporters like Richard Hernandez, and Michael Totten, etc etc. Thank gracious for the internet!
The issues this article points out, make another issue critical if Americans are to remain free or have access to unbiased information.
The “Internet” must be kept free of govt intervention at all costs. Regulation of the Internet by the American govt. or by any other entity (such as the supposedly altruistic & unbiased United Nations), must be kept to a minimum, if at all!
The Internet has shocked those seeking to indoctrinate the masses with carefully crafted scripts “they” want the public to read & believe.
Keep the Internet free of ANY govt intervention & free of any international intervention. That is the ONLY way we will have unfiltered news, that is not biased to one view or another!!!
Tell Congress to keep their corrupted hands OFF the Internet! Tell Congress to stop any interference from the UN of any other international body, including NGO’s who supposedly are just doing good!
Until I started writing on a blog I didn’t realize what a stranglehold the AP had on the news. In researching various stories I constantly ran across the attribution to the AP regardless of which news agency I went to. The story would always be a regurgitation of the original AP story, and yes even Fox news uses them.
It is a hassle to try and find a different version of a story because I try to track down a blog or local source not affiliated with the AP.
I encourage everyone when you have some free time to pick a story you are interested in and then visit all of the major news outlets and see just how many of them are merely reposting the original AP story.
Add that to the fact that the AP gets much of its information regarding the Middle East and the war of terror from members of the radical elements working for their propaganda wing and you can start to understand why the coverage of what is happening in the Middle East is so one sided and in more then one case completely false.
Thank your for the article. More attention needs to be drawn to the serious dangers inherent in the AP monopoly. Our form of government cannot survive, and indeed is already threatened by such a monopoly which, at the same time, is posing as an unbiased source of information.
Gerald Seib, Washington Bureau executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, recognizes that the old news business is dying:
According Gerald Seib, an assistant managing editor and the executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal, ABC’s “World News,” the “CBS Evening News” and the “NBC Nightly News” just aren’t important in the grand scheme of Washington politics, and that’s part of the changing culture of the news media.
…
“And he [Abrams] talks about how in the Reagan White House where he worked, the whole place shut down between 6:30 and 7:30. All activity stopped because everybody wanted to see what was being broadcast on the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news broadcasts. They were that important to the agenda in Washington. Much of the previous day had been constructed to influence what would be on those three newscasts. He said, ‘Now I work in the White House, I haven’t watched in months. They just don’t matter anymore. That’s not where people get their news.’”
Here is the money quote:
People are watching news on cable television. They’re reading it online all day long. It’s splintered, it’s fractured. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I can make an argument either way. It’s a more democratized flow of news, but there’s less sort of central understanding and a lot of people are getting their news the way they want it to be rather than the way it is and that’s a bad thing.
Interpretation: democracy is good except in the dissemination of information. That “central understanding” was the Liberalism view of reality. He confuses lack of diversity with the truth.
Getting the news you are looking for is a bad thing? Well, it could be if you get told a lot of lies, like Walter Cronkite proclaiming “and that’s the way it is.” Strikingly reminiscent of Pravda, which happens to be the Russian word for “truth.”
As a longtime AP staffer (left in the mid-1990s), I have been very disappointed at the direction my former employer has taken.
When I started (late 1970s) and for most of my time there, we were the Joe Friday of journalism — the “just the facts” guys/women. Opinions and columns were clearly marked, and we were told, in no uncertain terms, that our opinions were not to go into news stories.
I left in 1995 (family reasons — I wanted a life). The Internet boom began soon after, and a lot of career AP people (10-20 or more years there) began to sift away. AP salaries had begin to drift out of the competitive realm in major markets (especially NYC, where the General Desk is located). Management wasn’t unhappy to see older, costlier people leave — they could hire cheaper labor instead, and since UPI was no longer a viable competitor and Reuters hasn’t made much of a push into the US (business excepted), it has not had a major competitor across the board in years. Some areas face competition; others don’t.
The AP was also very late to the online age. But it finally realized that it held the trump card — content. Having worked at the news site of a major network, it was distressing to see how much AP content we had to use. For better or worse, there is no alternative. Newspapers that already use AP have turned to it for more and more coverage — after all, why hire your own staffer (or why spend the money to send him/her somewhere) when the AP, which they’re already paying for, is already there? That, folks, is how you get profit margins of 20% to 30%,
(BTW: Though there are more broadcast members now, the print folks pretty much still rule the roost).
The AP went outside for its new chairman a few years ago, bringing in Tom Curley from USA Today. Today, the AP has decided it again needs to get rid of a lot of veterans — and that it needs to take a stand in its stories, not just report, but editorialize. Since most members of the media, especially in major markets, are more liberal than the majority of Americans, it’s not surprising that viewpoints will slant to the left.
I still have friends at the AP — many of whom are horrified at what they see today. But since Curley & Co. are trying hard to get rid of them (there’s a major restructuring going on), they may soon have bigger problems.
Unfortunately, even foxnews.com seems to have degenerated to this too with almost nothing but AP stories and biased headlines.
Steve Boriss has shone a lot of light on the monopolistic MSM in this article, but he’s bent himself over backward to be lenient when he calls AP’s point of view merely ‘center-left’.
It’s a long way from the center, and it’s not to the right.
In its news from overseas, and from the Middle East particularly, the AP is solidly anti-american and pro-Palestinian, and has been the leading voice in convincing American citizens that the Iraq invasion has been ‘a disaster’. Compare the AP’s news from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel with that of the tiny number of independent journalists – Michael Yon, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio & other distinguished company, and see how the AP’s narrative is not only NOT giving the whole story, but almost certainly is shading its ‘news’ to produce a public opinion shift toward the European politically correct, ‘negotiate now and go back to sleep’, Bush-is-a-demon position.
Probably nothing has contributed to to the unpopularity of the Bush administration than this single monopoly of information. How can voters determine what’s best for the country when most of the real accomplishments of the past eight years have been screened out, and all the errors and unfortunate happenings emphasized and magnified?
The AP needs some real competition in the worst possible way, and even our hopes for Pajamas Media are merely faint beginnings.
This is a highly informative and illuminating posting. While I had noted that most newpapers credited AP, the NYT, and WP, I had been unaware of the monopolistic hold of the AP in the industry. It explains why, in Seattle – one of the very few cities of its size that still has two morning dailies – they run almost identical news pages and match each other in leftist venom in heir editorial columns. This in a city where at least 40% vote Republican.
But the fact is that if a truly objective news service was available they would not use it.
I can think of no other industry where the entrepreneurial instincts are so completely throttled. Such an industry deserves to die.
Combine such a monopoly with a journalistic profession taught that their function is not to observe accurately and report objectively but to look at all things from a “social activist” point of view and you wind up with a majority of the electorate inadequately informed to make a decision.
There is another dimension of this problem: the strategy of editors to simply ignore any effort to correct errors or acknowledge criticism. They simply continue to repeat the mistruth,arrogant in their sense of security. The same strategy applies to television. Fox News may have the largest single audience but the aggregate of the others is vastly larger.
The blog world, thank God, offers some relief for truth-seekers but probably influences no more than 15% of all voters. And a high number of that percentage come across as nut cases on one side or the other.
The Socialist Part is moribund, its membership at an all-time low. But the universities and colleges are cranking out graduates who are euro-style socialists but are so dumb they just think they are Democrats. And they have taken over the news industry. I admire your efforts but despair that, like Canada, ours will become a Socialist government without anyone having really voted for it.
“That they are a bunch of mindless parrots could not be more obvious…”
Indeed. But since they have Masters from Columbia, they think that automatically makes them correct. They’re wrong, of course. And I thank the ex-AP staffer for his honesty. As someone who used to freelance quite often, I have been to a few “society of professional journalists” meetings here locally. These people are SO biased, SO lazy, SO inept and so immature it’s amazing. They HATE bloggers—for obvious reasons. I used to attend, never saying I was conservative, and they just assumed I was liberal. You should have seen the depression in Nov. 2004. They have no idea how dangerous they are, since their “news” reaches so many. But thankfully, things are changing.
Relentless, destructive critique of MSM persons and publications is among the most important tasks of bloggers, commenters, and tipsters of the Amriki tribe.
Would this be the same Washington University that just gave Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree? Consider the source.
“Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.”
Stephen Vizinczey
One need look no further than the front page of any major US daily to see the truth of the above.
PapayaSF:
Yes, technically you are right, although USA Today is of course a different animal with its big airport and hotel circulations. To be more accurate, I might have said “financially viable METRO paper.” Thanks for the clarification.
Back in the mid-70s someone started a new paper in NYC called “The Trib” as a revived descendant of the Herald Tribune modernized. It tweaked my interest as I’m a curious sort of fellow, so I started buying it. The guys in the office with either the “Post” or the “News” tucked under their arms each morning were derisive of my “Trib.” It represented change — even if its actual content was not all that different, it still represented a threat to the status quo. It folded shortly thereafter.
Then in the 80s I started buying USA Today, same logic. The guys in the office did the same routine, with the added “why are you buying ‘McPaper?’” They made it, but I think only because of the national focus and the ubiquitous presence under the continental breakfasts outside hotel room doors from coast to coast.
Thank goodness for the zero start-up cost of blogs.
AP’s manta to members has always been, “You own us,” but that has not been the case in years. AP’s board members are de facto self-selected and it is likely any voice of “reason” will come from those seats. As Mr. Curley toured state newspaper associations after his appointment, I told him that AP had effectively hijacked itself from its newspaper members. It has. Follow the money.
But it doesn’t matter. I assure you that AP has enormous competition everywhere but intra-state, and that will take care of itself. If my consistant, repeated emails to our state bureau chief are any indication, AP will fail because because it does not pay attention to those who encourage AP to excellence.
And I also assure you that AP rules are not why there are few competitive newspapers. The real barrier to new newspapers is that advertising that supports news is sucked out of the market by anyone and everyone else, including, significantly, the U.S. Postal Service, since 1979, to stave off failure from mismanagement.
If you want to discuss the failure of newspapers, look at the failure of journalism schools to understand what journalism is and ought to be — and that comes from the failure of schools to understand and teach what is of value to individuals.
AP has played into that problem as well by turning its news copy into a more writer-driven operation. For years, the AP was like the New York Times, in that neither was seen was “writer friendly”. The copy was dull, with any truly descriptive adjectives being wiped out by the copy editor’s pencil, and it the reporters were mostly liberal, it was a kind of bureaucratic G-11 civil servant liberalism that tilted to one side ever so gently, to avoid the folks at Rockefeller Center getting calls from too many of their members about editorializing in news stories (and yes, having an alternate news service like UP or INS around in the past also helped in keeping the editors and the AP execs on the straight and narrow).
The Times went away from that ideal about 25 years ago, and within the last decade, the AP has followed, in an effort to make their stories more “interesting” and “readable”. And they can do it easier today because their income stream has been moving away from the member papers that made up their base for years and towards electronic media, either TV or via the Internet. And the copy probably is livelier, but by allowing the reporters more freedom to better express their own opinions within standard news stories (as opposed to the opinions of the people they’re actually reporting on), the AP is doing the same thing bigger papers like the NYT, Washington Post or L.A. Times are doing, which is to turn off about 50 percent of their potential readers.
Returning to the AP Stylebook circa 1961 probably isn’t the way to go, since reading news has to compete with so many more diversions today for people’s attention. But the editors at the AP could do their member papers a big service if they’s start being more selective about what adjectives and whose opinions get into the copy that’s not labeled as “news analysis”.
The most egregious example of the MSM/AP manipulation is the housing and economic crisis. Knowing that an economic crisis could offset the success of the Surge strategy in Iraq, the MSM mavens begin hysterically ranting about the impending collapse of our economy all based on a rise from under 1% of mortgages going into default to a whopping 2.8%. So, let’s ignore the fact that 97.2% of mortgages are solid, and just continue to rant about the 300% increase in defaulted mortgages. To continue with the hysteria, the MSM also began to slam the general economy, ignoring the fact that jobless claims dropped, and that any comparison from five years ago shows that NASDAQ, S&P 500, DOW, NYSE, and Russell 3000 are all up. Yes, they are down slightly from record highs, but hugely up against the five year run. But since the AP and the rest of the MSM are simply an appendage of the DNC, a crisis needed to be manufactured and the lies began. What is worse, is that there seems to be a majority in the great unwashed that actually believes the lies that they are fed.
“The AP is a not-for-profit owned and controlled by member newspapers. I continue to be puzzled why they are letting the AP destroy their businesses . . .”
Why? Because the major newspapers are not profit-oriented businesses either. Despite what they tell the IRS, they are nonprofit political organizations. The New York Times is a case in point. It has been hemorrhaging money for years, but has not reformed itself in response, because profit is not its purpose. Disseminating leftist propaganda to the American people is its purpose, and if the NYT has to lose money hand over fist in order to accomplish that goal, then it will not hesitate to do so.
Shudder. I hate the AP, though probably not quite as much as they hate me…
I kid, of course. A very excellent analysis, Steve! Hopefully, someone will figure out how to use the Internet to create a news network that’s *truly* competitive to the big wire services one of these days.
Oh wait… What’s that banner at the top of the page here say again?
Regards,
Brian/snapped shot
This former newspaper reporter has great concerns about the mass media. Partisan passions of journalists strongly influence their decisions in writing, editing, running, and playing stories. Also, many of those who criticize the press live in big cities whose chief newspapers rarely, if ever, run AP stories. In the smaller cities and communities of America, AP stories lead; critics and residents in, for example, the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas have no idea of the content and impact of those stories.
My local newspaper, the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass., where I once worked, passed on an AP story that briefly quoted remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Those remarks and Obama’s long association with Rev. Wright contradicted and nullified his appeal to end racial divisions in this country. Readers could not know of that because the story was not reported or referenced, save briefly, in one story that ran Page 10 of the Sunday newspaper. The AP led a story with Barack’s response to Bush remarks before the Israeli Knesset, with the Bush remarks pushed to the fifth paragraph, The paper put that story atop its second news page. (It ran there because coverage of the the California Supreme Court’s 4-3 gay marriage decision dominated Page One. The paper ran an unprecedented, four color shots on one story there, all celebrating the decision.)
Some on the left think that Barack won that round, a judgment no doubt shared at AP’s Washington Bureau and by some of the Telegram & Gazette’s current editors. Hooray! Our guy is fighting back! John Kerry’s willingness to ignore attacks, the left appears to think, hurt his candidacy. But the newspaper never printed in its news pages a single accusation of Kerry’s critics against his service in Vietnam or his conduct after his service. That noncoverage was typical of the press. To what was Kerry to respond, and would the press print the accusation? (it’s my guess that had Obama not responded, the Bush remarks would not have been printed.)
Mr. Boriss imagines that the press supports the Establishment. Oh? Which? Certainly that of government schools, whose graduates cannot spell English well and have limited knowledge of this nation’s history–currently, the fruit of initiatives Republicans and Democrats have supported.
That sort of thing is arguable. Consistently tilted coverage of government and politics is not. Many restrict their consideration of press propaganda to mass news vehicles supporting the views of a government. One can propagandize certain political and cultural views that oppose those of a government, too. But put Obama in the White House and give Democrats 61 seats in the Senate and a House majority, well, one expects the classic pattern to return, and it won’t need government coercion.
From Paul Colford, AP Director of Media Relations:
Mr. Boriss’ commentary about the Associated Press contains a number of inaccuracies. Permit me to address some of the more glaring ones, starting with his belief that the AP was founded “to get news from Europe faster.”
The AP dates its founding to 1846, when the heads of six New York newspapers agreed to share the cost of gathering and transmitting by telegraph the news from the Mexican War.
Mr. Boriss also writes that “the AP has used their [newspapers’] fees to mushroom into a huge, full-service news outlet.”
As the AP reported on its wire last year, “In recognition of the challenges facing the media, the AP froze its basic rates for member newspapers and broadcasters this year [2007] and already has committed to keeping fees at the same level next year [2008].”
In addition, last month the AP announced at its annual meeting in Washington $21 million in assessment reductions for 2009.
Mr. Boriss writes that “last September … the AP made a deal with Google News to feature the AP’s version” of stories on Google News.
The AP did not make a new deal with Google last September. On Aug. 31, Google started to host AP stories on its site under an existing agreement with the AP. The agreement gives Google the same rights to use AP content that the AP extends to hundreds of other commercial customers.
These commercial agreements are crucial to helping the not-for-profit AP pay the enormous costs of covering vital breaking news around the world, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, deadly hurricanes and tsunamis, and other conflicts as they occur.
AP’s commercial licensing policy was approved by, and is periodically reviewed by, the AP’s board of directors, whose members are elected by the AP’s 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members.
Mr. Boriss writes that a new program to make AP stories available on iPhones is “preempting its members’ necessary efforts.”
As AP President and CEO Tom Curley explained at last month’s annual meeting, “The formation of the Mobile News Network positions members [newspapers] to capture opportunities on high-growth mobile platforms … The Mobile News Network will provide a national platform for smart-phone users to get local content from brands they trust. Members can participate by providing local news that will appear alongside their logos. The network also offers a new outlet for members to sell local advertising to the mobile audience.”
Mr. Curley’s remarks can be read here: http://www.ap.org/pages/about/pressreleases/pr_041408d.html.
Thank you.
Paul Colford,
I appreciate that you took the time to respond. I could reply to each of your points specifically, which would lead each of us to clarify our language, but would not address the larger, more significant points. Do you acknowledge that the AP has served to reduce competition among newspapers in general, and more specifically competition on the basis of content? Do you agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that lack of real competition among wire services is unhealthy for democracy? Are you concerned that your members no longer provide what seems to their readers to be exclusive content because audiences can now get the same stories from multiple outlets on the Internet?
Not:
So a story about AP is tainted by Washington University’s honorary degree program … how?
NO!
Just don’t buy the newspapers… now wasn’t that easy?
I quit buying dead trees long ago. AP, NYT, tree killers and very bad for the enviroment.
The Associated Press is owned by the Washington Post.
Steve – Excellent article..
The Poynter Institute is starting to join this conversation.
They’ve posted AP v. Bloggers: Hurting Journalism? that and the comments make an interesting read from the Press/Journalist side.
Why do people have to “dumb” or “silly” because you all may disagree with left leaning views? I used to believe that people like you were ignorant. I have since decided that you are well meaning and have your own opinion. Stop being so narrow minded!
A question similar to “How do I know I am not dreaming?” should be asked in this context: “How do I know I am not hypnotized?”
Focussing the public’s consciousness, the media has the ability to suggest the importance or unimportance of stories. Through lack of reporting or through providing false information and then repeating it, the media has the ability to shape the reality of society, conditioning it to think in certain ways. Enhanced by fear and confusion, hypnotic suggestibility allows suggestions to override one’s own senses. Thus it has become like heresy to point out the falseness of the reality the media has created, even though this is a simple matter of objectively showing that the government’s research is unscientific (and therefore should not be trusted) and that it does not describe physical reality.
“Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe”
Click “DOWNLOAD” button on this page to get the scientific paper:
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
NIST connections to the makers of nanothermite explosives: http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf
Iran-Contra’s ‘Lost Chapter’ By Robert Parry (A Special Report) June 30, 2008 – http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/062908.html
Reply to AJ:
Your statement “The only reason people still don’t see through the Democrat Party is because the media is their right arm” is connivingly deceptive. You turned the facts around;
It is the Republican Party that has the Zionist media news and entertainment networks behind them. How else could they have gotten away with tampering with election results and bring George Bush into the White House so they could pull thru the 9/11 plot and use it to create a ‘Fascist’ regime in the U.S. that trampled on the Constitution and passed their draconian laws.
The Republican Party leaders are extremist self-serving wealthy bigoted war-mongers who care nothing about the American people but serve their masters in the Zionist Jewish lobby. They are public enemy No. 1.
“Why else would libs hate talk radio, blogs and Fox News?”
Because ‘Talk Radio’ is full of filth and is run by disgusting bigots who hate anybody holding views different from theirs. Fox News is a Zionist propaganda network owned by Rupert Murdoch who is a known Zionist Jew.