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The Defense Department is refusing to do a speedy review of a Freedom of Information Act request for graphic photos of Osama bin Laden's corpse, setting the stage for a protracted battle over access to the images. In a letter to The Associated Press, the department said the AP did not demonstrate an urgent or compelling need for the photos or show that the information has a particular value that would be lost if not provided in an expedited manner. As a result, it is not clear when or if the photos will be provided. The AP received the letter...

Move over, CBS. Hang up the kid-leather gloves, WaPo/ABC. There’s a new sample-skewing sheriff in town, and it’s the Associated Press. In a new definition of “outlier,” the AP reported that its latest poll from GfK Roper shows Barack Obama with a 60% approval rating in a survey of 1001 adults, with even his approval on the economy shooting past the 50% mark: President Barack Obama’s approval rating has hit its highest point in two years — 60 percent — and more than half of Americans now say he deserves to be re-elected, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll taken...

Today, class, we will discuss matters like The Associated Press Stylebook (APSB) and such. Considered a veritable bible for all things journalistic, the ASPB has been around for more than 30 years. It says, on the cover, that the book is "the industry's best-selling reference, essential for journalists, students, editors and writers in all professions." I know the APSB and I use it as a tool in a writing class I teach at Johns Hopkins University. I fastidiously follow ASPB procedure, except in those instances when I don't. Such instances number exactly two. Readers learned of one in my last...

Headline only.

The New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News and UnionLeader.com will make a major change in national and regional news, feature and photo providers as of Jan. 1, when they subscribe to both the Reuters America and the McClatchy-Tribune Information Services and end their membership in the Associated Press. New Hampshire's only statewide newspapers and largest newspaper website will also continue to feature content from the Scripps Howard News Service and from the Washington-based Politico group. Union Leader Corp. President and Publisher Joseph McQuaid said the move to Reuters and McClatchy offers editors a wider and deeper choice of content...

Well, well, well. Remember back when the Associated Press threatened bloggers for quoting snippets of AP articles? Is the organization considering dipping its toes in the Righthaven waters? The Las Vegas Sun reports that Righthaven has signed up Media News as a client and has sued a blogger on behalf of the Denver Post, after the blogger apparently reposted a Denver Post column by Mike Rosen (with a link and credit). This is interesting for a few different reasons. First, it was just a few weeks ago that the Denver Post published a cryptic "reminder" about copyright that had a...

Revenues from newspapers have fallen by about one-third at the Associated Press since 2008, from $220 million a year to about $140 million in 2010, and now make up just over 20 percent of the organization's total revenue. CEO and President Tom Curley revealed the decline when I asked him last week about the cooperative's business relationship with its member-owners. He added two more financial nuggets: * "We expect it will continue to drop another $5 to $7 million a year" in 2011 and beyond. * The AP loses money on services to newspapers and effectively subsidizes those offerings with...

Much back and forth has gone on this week over whether Republicans are committed to the repeal of the government takeover of health care known as Obamacare. The so-called mainstream media has gotten into the act in an effort to suppress Republican voter turnout. Having a great deal invested in the Obama façade they created, the media is once again in full protect mode trying to help Democrats avoid an out-and-out slaughter on Nov. 2. The only way to suppress GOP turnout is if disheartened voters believe their efforts to expel Democrats won’t make a difference in policy. And the...

When you run into malaprops among Advanced Placement students, you really have to ruminate over the condition of education. “Reading 800-plus Advanced Placement essays at a table of other people doing the same thing tends to inspire waves of correctorial comments of the ‘kids say the darndest/silliest/inanest things’ variety,” Lisa Fluet writes in the October 8, 2010 issue of The Chronicle Review. Fluet, an assistant professor of English at Boston College, shared a few of these: “Some new vocabulary I learned, and some things students asked me to contemplate as a reader of their essays: “‘Dead ass’ means ‘very serious,’...

Memo sent to AP staff From: Kent, Tom Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 11:53 AM Subject: Standards Center guidance: Planned Sept. 11 Quran burning Colleagues, As you know, a group known as the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has announced that it intends to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11. -snip- Should the event happen on Saturday, the AP will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning.

LIBBY, Mont. (AP) — Instead of saying thanks, some residents rebuked Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Max Baucus on Monday for the very law that could help potentially thousands of asbestos victims here. The health care reform law passed last year expands Medicare coverage for the sick residents of Libby, where years of asbestos pollution from a vermiculite mine made this the nation's deadliest Superfund site. About 400 Libby residents have signed up for the new coverage as of this week, Sebelius said. But many of those from this northwestern Montana town of 3,000 who came to listen to...

Who needs a public relations department when you have a willing accomplice like the Associated Press? A July 28 story written by AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid took a very uncritical look at the recently released "State of the Climate" report. According to Schmid, this report, which has a fair share of critics, makes a definitive call about climate change. (h/t Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com) "Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, the report said its analysis of 10 indicators that are ‘clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is...

As we continue our list of the top ten most left-biased journalists working in America today (See part one here), we have to nominate Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press for spot number nine on the countdown. The Associated Press has been increasingly disappointing at least since Ron Fournier, one of its former bureau chiefs, decided in 2008 to change the APs editorial policy and allow more emotive language and opinion to become an official part of its newswire copy. Not every AP reporter has taken Fournier’s challenge, but boy has Liz Sidoti claimed that policy as her own. Liz...

Perhaps it is frustration, as expressed by Anderson Cooper, with the new White House rules inhibiting reports about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is now causing a big crack in the Mainstream Media wall which until recently mostly avoided direct criticism of the Obama administration response. However that crack has now turned into a flood of surprising criticism coming from formerly friendly outlets such as the Associated Press. Read this amazing AP report and keep in mind that it is no longer just conservative sources that are harsh in their criticisms of the Obama Gulf oil containment efforts:...

One of the best ways to cajole a reader into accepting a point of view is to use emotional descriptives in writing. It is the difference between opinion style editorials -- like what I write -- and straight news -- like what a wire service like the Associated Press is supposed to be writing. Unfortunately, the AP has been adding ever larger amounts of emotional language to its news and, not surprisingly, that emotion is used to give support to the American left and to denigrate the right. A recent AP story about the rise of the new conservative movement...

CNN has announced that it will cease using all content from the Associated Press effective June 30, and from all appearances will take a run at becoming a credible wire service competitor. Although it would be easy to dismiss this as the blind leaving the blind, this development seems like it has the potential to alter the news landscape and temper some of the worst excesses of press bias and ignorance. Here are a few paragraphs from CNN's internal announcement, as carried at Media Bistro: To: CNN Staff From: Jim Walton We are taking an important next step in the...

CNN will no longer use Associated Press content as part of the network's news coverage, according a memo obtained by Yahoo! News. CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton notified staff of the move Monday, writing that "the content we offer will be distinctive, compelling and, I am proud to say, our own." "Beyond the obvious business reasons for this operating shift — the content we spend our money to create should be the content we present, and less reliance on outside sources will mean more to invest in our organization — there are other important motivations," Walton wrote. "CNN-exclusive content will...

Members of Congress chastised the largest oil companies Tuesday, accusing them of being no better prepared than BP to avert an environmental catastrophe. As the oil executives testified at a House hearing, Rep. Joseph Cao said: "In the Asian culture, we do things differently," Cao said. "During the samurai days, we'd just give you a knife, and ask you to commit hari-kari." As the oil executives testified at a House hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman asserted that the companies' spill response plans amounted to "paper exercises" that mirrored BP's failed plan. Their strategies to plug a spill deep beneath the sea...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the...

Amidst the general public discontent with ObamaCare, the Associated Press is spinning that it is not repeal that is favored but merely a bunch of revisions. Left unsaid is if all these revisions are necessary, why did Congress pass such a flawed bill in the first place? Let the AP spin cycle begin: WASHINGTON — Toss it or fix it?Anxious backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are starting to see a flicker of hope.While polls show Americans remain sharply divided over the Democrats' landmark legislation, they aren't clamoring for its repeal. Really? A few paragraphs later AP...