Nation-Building >> DDF: Associated Press' old habits die hard | return to front page

A call to arms is in order. This Associated Press story leads off with an egregious, bald lie:

For a brief time in their debate Sunday, Democrats seemed to be hewing to a New Year's resolution to stick more carefully to the facts on taxes, the budget and more. But old habits die hard.

(emphasis mine) Old habits die hard? This is a news wire story - not an opinion rag. Putting this in the lead of the story essentiually insinuates that all Democrats are habitual liars.

Speaking of habitual liars, the author of the hit piece is Calvin Woodward, who has a well-documented history of biased reporting - such as in 2000, when he penned similar hatchet jobs against Al Gore.

Not to beoutdone is famed AP hack Nedra Pickler, whose own take on the debate included this monstrosity in the second graf:

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) -- In a feisty, first debate of the election year, Howard Dean drew fire from fellow Democrats on Sunday over trade, terror, taxes and more, then calmly dismissed his rivals as "co-opted by the agenda of George Bush."

"I opposed the Iraq war when everyone else up here was for it," said the former Vermont governor, invoking the issue that helped fuel his 2003 transformation from asterisk in the polls to front-runner.

Nedra Pickler is setting up the meme that Dean is a liar - from reading the above, you'd conclude that Dean lied because he didn't mention Kucinich and Mosely-Braun, who were on the stage. But look at the actual debate transcript:

DEAN: ... I opposed the Iraq war; with the exception of Dennis and Carol, everybody else supported it.

Mizz Pickler seems to be writing these stories out her arse rather than doing any actual, you know, journalism. With sources and all.

Time for action. The phone number for the AP National desk at 212-621-1600 - and the email address of the authora are cwoodward@ap.org and npickler@ap.org. Nedra's phone number at the AP is 202-776-9421.

Finally - make a symbolic donation to Dean for $11.05 or more to show the media establishment that the more they try to smear Dean, the stronger we become.

Dana, please repost this to the DDF site?