The bias of the Associated Press
Example One: Clinton’s Heart Throb
First there’s poor Tom Hays of the Associated Press, too hung over from an overdose of boos to report accurately on the Bush crowd/Clinton heart attack story. See below.
Example Two: Tanks for the Memories
Now we have a story that AP was careful not to byline, so the author doesn’t have to get all the nasty email that the besotted Mr. Hays is getting. You see the AP really is interested in investigative journalism, just when there are no swift boat vets or fellas named Kerry involved. Here’s the AP scoop, eviscerating another wascally wepublican:
Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: “I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes.”
Historians, however, are questioning Schwarzenegger’s version of postwar history — if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America’s most populous state.
“It’s a fact — as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria,” the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.
Aha! That lying GOP Nazi…..But not so fast. Here’s the actual quote:
When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector. Growing up, we were told, “Don’t look the soldiers in the eye. Look straight ahead.” It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him off to the Soviet Union as slave labor.
My family didn’t have a car — but one day we were in my uncle’s car. It was near dark as we came to a Soviet checkpoint. I was a little boy, I wasn’t an action hero back then, and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I’d never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear of the Soviet boot. Today, the world no longer fears the Soviet Union and it is because of the United States of America!
(Props to Tom McGuire, Prestopundit.)
Our Sad Conclusion
Now we can say of the AP what we say when we read the New York Times: “this would be very interesting if it turns out to be true.”
UPDATE: Powerline has more on the false AP story by Roland Prinz, which has now been picked up by 539 outlets.