Naturally, I clicked on the Yahoo! link to see who was finally calling out Our Media Stars on how they're in the tank for McCain.

My heart sank. It's from the AP. (Their TV writer, David Bauder, specifically.)

Yes we all got the intention of the cover, but were also aware of its dangers.  Well, here we have an AP article on this news story that, as so often AP has done, demonstrates its irresponsible journalistic practices.

The article glosses over the essence of the satire in reporting about the cover and reports only on its negative images.

Can the AP be trusted anymore?  In a word: No!!  A bombshell broke a while ago.  It's been reported that Ron Fournier, who is now the AP Washington bureau chief, was emailing Karl Rove over Pat Tillman's death.  What was discussed between them should shred any credibility the Associated Press has left.

Recently, the AP has been failing to uphold its standards of journalistic integrity. Josh Marshall at TPM has been documenting this carefully, even stating semi-facetiously that the AP has "endorsed" McCain. He has even charged the AP with bamboozlement over its distortion of Obama's Iraq stance.

In particular, AP writer Liz Sidoti (of McCain donut sprinkles fame: see first link) has written that: "On Iraq, he has gone from hard-line opposition to the war to more nuanced rhetoric that calls for a troop drawdown process that could last 16 months." Of course, this is patently false for Obama has always talked about a 16 month withdrawal. She also writes of Obama's Iraq stance: "a potentially flexible formulation that has troubled liberals."

However, this is also patently false. The uniform response from the liberal blogosphere has been condemnation of the media for distortion, not Obama.

Below I describe how you can take action. Please rec this diary to encourage others to do likewise.

I was reading an AP article about McCaingry attacking Obama on trade and saw this:

The likely Democratic nominee pledged to keep in place the federal government's 27-year moratorium on offshore drilling, and criticized McCain on changing his position on the matter. "The politics may have changed but the facts haven't," Obama said.

So, the genuises over at the AP no longer want dirty little hippie bloggers quoting their stories word for word. Instead, our new corporate overlords would prefer that we link to the article and then summarize what it is saying in our own words. However, like many of us on the intertubes I am a lazy SOB, so the way I see it there is only one solution to this intractable problem: Babelfish.

Just when you think the AP can't be any more idiotic, it turns out that they are.

[T]heir Terms of Use explicitly prohibit you, even if you’ve paid them, from quoting the Associated Press in order to criticize the Associated Press:

You shall not use the Content in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory to the author, the publication from which the Content came, or any person connected with the creation of the Content or depicted in the Content. You agree not to use the Content in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory to or damaging to the reputation of Publisher, its licensors, or any person connected with the creation of the Content or referenced in the Content [...]

Publisher reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.

Laughable.

AP:

I'LL DRINK TO THAT: In The Mix, a bar in San Francisco's Castro district, a group of men and women broke into applause as a large flat-screen television showed the first same-sex couple getting their wedding licenses in City Hall.

"They're iconic," said Michael Groark, 61, of the couple, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. "This is a tribute they deserve."

Groark said much has changed since he first moved to San Francisco in the 1970s when much of the gay community rejected the idea of marriage as an imitation of heterosexual values.

Sitting on the long polished bar, Tom Longland, 66, agreed.

"I see a change in attitudes and I hope it starts spreading outside California," Longland said.

Hey AP -- that's 120 words. Have your lawyers call my lawyers.

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Media experts are swarming over the AP's takedown notice against two bloggers, claiming that no one is allowed to excerpt from AP stories anymore. Remember the AP's idiotic assertion:

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

The dinosaurs at the AP think they know what the "spirit of the internet" is, and they claim it has nothing to do with copying pieces of information from other sources for purposes of criticism, education, or parody.

David Ardia at PBS' MediaShift Idea Lab examines the AP's claims and finds them legally lacking. They are. Without a doubt. Which is why I feel comfortable taunting them at the top of this page.

But aside from the AP's boneheaded wrongness, and aside from the law, there's one component of this story that's been bugging me, and it's this:

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

What's there to discuss? As Atrios says:

[T]he AP is full of shit here and there's nothing to talk about. If they want to take this to court, they can, but there are no guidelines to be negotiated here. They don't write copyright law or get to determine its precise boundaries. It isn't for them to determine what is legal fair use and what isn't.

The Toronto Globe and Mail's Matthew Ingram:

[T]he AP doesn’t have to offer a “safe harbor” to bloggers or other media sites under certain circumstances. The fair use exemption under U.S. copyright law already does that, whether the newswire likes it or not (and clearly it doesn’t). If it wants to get someone to say whether a few sentences excerpted on a blog qualifies or not, then it can go to court and try to get a judge to do so. But sitting down and trying to negotiate some kind of blanket pass for something that is already permitted under law seems like a mug’s game.

The dumbasses at the Media Bloggers Association, of course, are walking right into that meeting because they crave nothing more than creating the impression that they, you know, represent bloggers (they don't). But anyone with an inkling of understanding of the law and principles at stake would know that the AP has no ground to stand on, and anything negotiated between them and the MBA will be ignored by the vast majority of bloggers anyway. If people haven't noticed, we're not the type of people that lets others do the talking for us. We do our own thing.

Lots of blogs are calling for boycotts of AP content. Not me. I'm going to keep using it. I will copy and paste as many words as I feel necessary to make my points and that I feel are within bounds of copyright law (and remember, I've got a JD and specialized in media law, so I know the rules pretty well). And I will keep doing so if I get an AP takedown notice (which I will make a big public show of ignoring). And then, either the AP -- an organization famous for taking its members work without credit -- will either back down and shut the hell up, or we'll have a judge resolve the easiest question of law in the history of copyright jurisprudence.

The AP doesn't get to negotiate copyright law. But now, perhaps, they'll threaten someone who can afford to fight back, instead of cowardly going after small bloggers.

I was going to make a big stink about this today, but it looks like the Associated Press is responding quickly to criticism:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

On Saturday, The A.P. retreated. Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet [...]

All good? Maybe not.

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

The AP is going to lecture bloggers about what the "spirit of the internet" is all about? Laughable. And the AP certainly doesn't have free reign to rewrite copyright law on its own. Fair use provisions exist for a reason

If they don't back off this ridiculous notion, there will be litigation, and Daily Kos will be happy to be at the forefront of any such effort.

Hopefully, sanity (and their legal team) will prevail at the AP before we have to go down that path.

I won't make this a long entry. But there's a major Boycott of the Associated Press going down.

This post was originally written for MTV's Choose Or Lose Street Team '08.

Katherine Patrick, the daughter of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, is a courageous youth.  In the last year she has come out as a lesbian to her friends and family, and last week she came out to the whole world.  18-year-old Katherine Patrick did a sit down interview with Bay Windows, "New England's largest GLBT newspaper", to make the announcement, and the news has since been written about by the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, and countless other news outlets that reach across the globe.

It looks like some boss at the AP decided to start up the race issue again, this time to let everyone know... yet again... that Barack is 'running while black' and to let everyone know that older racist voters might not vote for him.  

Thank God they informed me that racists won't vote for a black man, it being that they are racists and Barack is a black man.  Without such CAREFUL and PRECISE reporting, I might have missed the fact that racist pigs won't be pulling the lever for our man Barack.

Seriously though: who the FUCK cares that some bored media outlet is trying, yet again, to stir up racial tensions.  It is worth noting that the Associated Press feeds most other media outlets who are too lazy to do their own reporting (notice my link below is CBS linking to the AP which is "presented by Exxon Mobil").

So now we can look forward to newscasters parroting this idiotic "news" from the AP in the nightly news.  Certainly Wolf Blitzer et al will be sinking their fangs into this "story" of old fart racists if they haven't already.

I will excerpt one racist below if only to expose such bad "reporting."  Otherwise I loathe giving the AP press here ...but someone's got to call these dipshits out:

In Sunday article "McCain sees right-of-center nation as he moves against Obama" syndicated to newspapers all over the county, the Associated Press political reporter Liz Sidoti let's the Republican spokesperson label Obama in the following way:

"There is an overwhelming difference between the right-of-center John McCain and the most liberal member of the Senate, Barack Obama"

Obviously this is the Republican-McCain spin, derived from the phony baloney partisan National Journal rankings, and we need to push the Media from accepting it at face value.

Personally I wish that it was true that Obama was so liberal.  But alas, based on the impartial academic analysis of VoteView, while McCain really is an extreme right winger from the 4th to 2nd most conservative senator, Obama's true ranking is in the range of 10th to 21st most liberal. Truth is, McCain is more of an an extremist conservative, and (for better or worse) Obama is a moderate-liberal

An abbreviated look at the media's take on the current state of the Republican Party.  

From the New York Times:

Republican defeat...waves of apprehension across an already troubled party...heavy losses in the fall...a once-steadfast Republican district...foreshadowing more losses for the party in November...the Republican label seems tarnished...level of distress was evident...issued a dire warning...the Republican Party had been severely damaged...could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate...putting into play Southern seats that were once solidly Republican...the string of Republican losses suggested a problem with the Republican label...a tense, private post-mortem...worried House Republicans demanded that their leadership come up with a plan to stave off potentially devastating losses...vast dissatisfaction, frustration and discouragement...The Republican brand is down...the results in these special elections portend ominously for House Republicans...some expressed despair about the months ahead...

The Associated Press:

Stunned House Republicans...their third straight election defeat in once-friendly territory...the worst since Watergate and far more toxic than the fall of 2006 when we lost 30 seats...President Bush is unpopular...Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee enjoyed a cash advantage of $44 million to $7 million...that had been in Republican hands for three decades...necessitated by resignations by incumbent Republicans...backfire...We're not going to be able to scare people into voting Republican... the loss of three seats in special elections was a significant blow... They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall...leaves Republicans with only 199 seats, compared with 236 for the Democrats...fathered a child out of wedlock...given the party's financial problems...

And the Washington Post:

House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday...contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November...decried their leadership as out of touch with the political catastrophe they face..."The Change You Deserve" -- came under mocking fire...mirrors the advertising slogan for the antidepressant Effexor...a deficiency in our message and a loss of confidence in the American people...loss in northern Mississippi was devastating...Republicans face a flood of retirements...badly damaged by scandals...Republican strategists were downcast...fail to understand the deep seeded antipathy toward the President, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures...a tense closed-door meeting...I've never seen members so frustrated or demoralized...

Good times.

or Mom and Dad, as the case may be.

This probably comes as a shock to nobody, but the MSM is doing a disservice to you.  This of course is putting it mildly, as what I am about to discuss goes beyond just doing a disservice, but when it comes to this "working class white" narrative, they are really putting themselves over the top when it comes to creating a nonexistent news story.

What does this rant on the MSM have to do with Grammy and Grampy, or Mom and Dad as the case may be?  You’ll have to follow me over the fold...

With only six months until the presidential election, what could be more informative than a report on the campaign styles of John McCain verus Barack Obama? Why talk about issues when, "mannerisms on the trail can provide insights into how one could behave in office"? Spontaneous and accessible or disciplined and remote, witty and quick or a gifted orator...inquiring minds want to know. But instead of dissecting this drivel du jour, let's focus on a bit of unintended comedy from this Associated Press article by Liz Sidoti:

After events, McCain almost always takes media questions. Then, it's back to his bus, where McCain parks himself in a leather captain's chair with a scrum of reporters squeezed in around him, balancing their tape recorders on his knees. He'll spend hours talking with them about anything, sometimes leaving reporters with little else to ask and the candidate pushing: "What else? What else?"

Well, sure. We've all seen how merciless the media scrutiny of McCain has been. Few candidates could have withstood the beating he took over the question of whether he's a straight talker or the straightest talker.

But the next time Ms. Sidoti and the rest of McCain's adoring scrum run out questions about how much of a maverick he really is, perhaps they could ask him about how many years he is willing to let U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, whether he is so gung-ho for war with Iran that he's willing to lie or if he really just doesn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, how he can be the anti-lobbyist candidate while lobbyists run his campaign, which views he shares with John Hagee and Rod Parsley, when his wife is going to release her tax returns, which big contributor besides Donald Diamond has he done favors for, how long will he continue to break finance election laws...or they could just head back to his "cabin" for another barbeque.

Once again the Associated Press is helping with John McCain's efforts to lessen the impact of his saying he's fine with staying in Iraq for 100 years.  The lede in today's article

Republican John McCain defended himself Friday against television ads that accuse him of advocating a 100-year war in Iraq.

The ad accuses him of nothing.  It simply uses his own words against a backdrop of the cost of this war.  

Instead of taking stenography from the McCain campaign, the Associated Press should try watching the ad.

The major Seattle papers suffer from "split personality" - or "Part A/Part B disorder".

The Seattle Times often has excellent Part A features covering the environment and Iraq. It was the Times where flag-draped US military coffins were first shown. On the other hand, its Part B sucks - particularly in election times, when its estate-tax-obsessed owners impose a pro-Republican endorsement line.

What about the Seattle P-I? According to its editorial pages, it is a model of progressivism - the perfect paper for a city that has recently become a major competitor for the title "progressive capital U.S.A.". But Part A? Too often, the front page serves as a hidden ad for business interest, most notably the real-estate lobby.

And sometimes, P-I's editors just go to sleep and let the night people paste in whatever tripe AP sends their way. As, for example, in today's page A4, featuring an "analysis piece" on Rev. Wright by... none other than our sweet Nedra Pickler.

I think the P-I should get an earful from its progressive base over this. Contact details below the fold.