Does AP choose the left wing bias of the news, or does it merely redistribute the left wing bias of a few leading newspapers? Do they get 100 pro-Obama stories and 100 pro-Bush stories but spike the pro-Bush stories, or do its affiliates provide 100 pro-Obama stories and 1 pro-Bush story which AP distributes?
I really don't know if AP is the cause or the effect of the MSM's left wing bias.
Both actually.
The Associated Press (AP) has an office-newsroom in most major metropolitan cities across America, and can thus cover the stories IT chooses with its own 'in-house' reporters.
But, like you alluded to, the AP gets most of its wire copy from local newspapers and media organizations which willingly joins the AP and pays for the right to use its wire copy.
But written into those contracts: AP has the right to change, edit, and otherwise distort any story it picks up from a local newspaper.
Likewise, the newspapers have the right to change, edit, and otherwise distort any article it takes from the AP wire service.
I've been in newsrooms many times where the editor of a local newspaper will scroll through the AP wire service until it finds a story that has the right quotes and 'distortion' .... and that local newspaper then "writes around" those quotes to make its OWN version of what happened.
Then it notes at the bottom of the newspaper story "The AP contributed to this story" or something like that.
Likewise, the 'in house' AP reporters can select from hundreds or thousands of local newspaper stories ... and will often do follow up stories on only those which fits in with the AP agenda, which is basically Democrat-good and Republican bad.
Rush Limbaugh is good at rooting out the REAL biased AP reporters, and often makes fools of them on his show.
Most casual readers just assume that the AP is down the middle, and take its stories as credible when they are anything but.
If God came down today and said "Edit35, you can make one change in the American media to bring some balance.... I would close down AP and open up an entirely new Fox News type of organization which is not obsessed at making the lib-Dems look like angels, and the GOP look like demons.
The entire political landscape would be changed within months, I am certain.