AP Shame

Yahoo! News - Bush Casts Kerry As Tax Raiser in TV Ad:

Here is a critique that I sent to Ron Fournier:

Ron,

Your approach to Bush's new ad was a bit presumptive and slanted don't you think. Below is a short critique of your article:

Paragraph 1: You start out with an assumptive and subjective device in the first sentence: "President Bush, fearing political backlash over the loss of U.S. jobs..." It seems to me that you have claimed some kind of divination to arrive at this interpretation. With this comment you have painted the ad as decisively defensive in nature. Why not remove the comment and state: "President Bush casts Democratic rival John Kerry as a tax-raising threat to the American economy in a new television commercial airing Thursday."?

Paragraph 3: You explicate the ad very well but add another aside out of the blue: "It also says he would raise taxes by $900 billion, a charge denied by Kerry's campaign." Why the comment here. Could you not state the content of the ad and offer the other side's views at a later point? You take great pains later in the article to point out the Kerry campaign's rebuttal, why not include it there?

Paragraph 14: Here is the peak of your bias. I'm uncertain how you defend this paragraph, it speaks for itself: "Kerry has never proposed a $900 billion tax increase, as the ad suggests. The Bush administration, which has overseen the loss of government surpluses and an explosion of deficits, comes up with the $900 billion figure by calculating the cost of Kerry's programs. Kerry left himself open to criticism by failing to detail the cost of his promises." Again, the second sentence commented aside between commas is pure biased rancor on your part.

Paragraphs 15 and 16 are pure propaganda. Is this a reporting piece or your candid support for the Kerry campaign?

Other noted biases in this article:

"The ad addresses a major vulnerability for Bush. A recent AP poll showed that the economy is the most important issue to voters, and 53 percent of them believe Kerry is best suited to create jobs" See paragraph 1 explanation.

Thanks for your attention
Justin Hart