THE US REPORT

The Associated Press, a brand long regarded as an impartial provider of news, has moved to a more opinionated approach, according to an article at Politico. The AP sells what has traditionally been billed as straight news to a majority of the nation’s newspapers. AP content is also carried by other media such as websites and radio.

Commenting on the Politico article, Warner Todd Huston at Red State wrote about new Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, who “…decided that a more hard-charging, opinion oriented style of writing is the new direction the AP should take in this new Internet age and it's a direction that makes the AP's past bias even more pronounced.” Fournier began acting as chief in May.

I noted in my own column at Red State the differences in two AP stories dealing with the age of public figures. A story about Supreme Court Justices carried the headline, “No rush to retire black robes on Supreme Court.” The opening sentence pointed out that Justices John Paul Stevens (88) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (75) stay physically active. No concerns were expressed about those justices coping with demands and rigors of their positions. Both justices are considered liberal. A headline for the other story dealing with Sen. John McCain’s age (71) blurted, “For some, Republican John McCain is ‘too old.’”

A backdrop for the AP’s new slant is a decline in revenue for newspapers. Digital Media Wire says 2008 may end up as the “worst on record for the newspaper advertising industry.”

Significant reliance on wire service stories results in homogenized content in newspapers across the nation, creating a challenge for a newspaper to distinguish its own brand from another’s. Newspapers do often try to edit so that the story carries regional significance, something that may be harder to do now that AP will focus on what I perceive as advocacy journalism.