Posted on 05/11/2015 3:50:20 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
....today we have a possible egregious distortion of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s views on Medicaid. Here’s the headline from the AP that looks to be in error:
Gov. Scott Concedes That Earlier Medicaid Support Was A Ruse....
...But is it true? Politico’s Marc Caputo reports:
...I'm a fan of @AP, but I think a line editor screwed this up. Scott never explicitly said his Medicaid support was a "ruse"
(Excerpt) Read more at twitchy.com ...
A lie saying a Republican governor lied.
Bump
In the blink of an eye, this lie about the governor has already become an article of faith among millions of liberals.
And what fun I’ll have taking them to the woodshed for believing this lie (among many others).
Twitter is a vehicle used by and for Twits.
The article and headline was not on Twitter exclusively. It was a wire story, sent to many so-called news outlets.
The Twitter reaction was appropriate, and deserved.
The AP is the granddaddy of all the wire services. It was founded as the New York Associated Press in 1848, and “the wire” has been in continuous operation ever since. In the 21st Century we all know that if I am on one end of the telephone line and you are on the other, we are conducting a virtual meeting. This implies that wire services are nothing but meetings of journalists.Economic theory explains the significance of this fact.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
The virtual meeting which is the AP has been in continuous operation since the memory of living man runneth not to the contrary. It is inevitable that that must have produced a “conspiracy against the public” before any of us was even born. What does that “conspiracy” entail? The AP is a mutual admiration society. When journalists claim “journalistic objectivity” they believe - and write their own press clippings.It is impossible for anyone to know that they are being objective; the only legitimate approach to objectivity is to try to be objective. and that implies a serious examination of the possibility that where you stand is being influenced by where you sit. To claim to be objective is to reject the idea that you have to consider that possibility. Belonging to a mutual admiration society which you know will claim objectivity for you is no different from claiming objectivity for yourself.
The AP is a parody of a system which could possibly produce anything close to objective journalism.
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