Why is the AP doing analysis pieces anyway? This is a disturbing development — their content gets syndicated far and wide. The AP “opinion” will get distributed far and wide — if they’re in the tank for McCain, I don’t see how Obama’s campaign overcomes that:
Yesterday we flagged the AP’s Jennifer Loven’s ‘analysis’ piece flogging the McCain/RNC spin on Obama’s run to the center. Well, as every crack communication operation knows, message repetition is the key to success. And so today we have another ‘analysis’ piece, this time by the AP’s Steven Hurst. And it’s practically the same piece. Hurst and Loven actually both use the identical quote from RNC spinmeister Alex Conant.
Says Conant: “”There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience.”
The identical quote appears in both pieces. If the pieces weren’t bylined I think I might have assumed one was a rewrite of the other. But they actually appear to be two completely original articles, just mouthing the identical McCain/RNC line.
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July 6th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
AP has had opinion pieces since I started in journalism. What you may be noticing is more AP opinion running as publications cut back on their own editorial staff. AP staff often tends to be younger and less experienced, too, and you’ll see not great rewrites of press releases at times.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Matt, thanks for the info — you’re probably right about why I’m noticing it more.
Besides, at ESPN, I would only look at the raw feed when it wasn’t working right.
Sujal