Dear AP (All Propaganda): Stenography Is Not Journalism

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Oy! Both of Arizona's major newspapers, The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star, ran the same stories today from the Associated Press (AP) aka All Propaganda for 2012 election coverage. These same reports probably ran in numerous newspapers across the country today. This is how the "echo chamber" operates to set the narrative that the media villagers have decided upon for the 2012 election.

The stories at issue are these:

Arizona Republic: Rick Perry blasts Obama, notes his own record of creating jobs, by Mike Gover (AP); Arizona Daily Star, Perry touts his record as he rips Obama.

Arizona Republic: Bachmann: U.S. sitting on energy 'mother lode', by Brendan Farrington (AP); Arizona Daily Star Bachmann: Environmentalists blocking US energy.

Arizona Republic: Poll: Obama faces test with key voters, by Ken Thomas and Jennifer Agiesta (AP); Arizona Daily Star, Polls: Obama losing ground among key Dem voting groups.

[Note: The Arizona Daily Star rarely attributes bylines, and tends to engage in creative headline writing]

You may recall that awhile back Jimmy Olsen at the Daily Planet, er, the Arizona Daily Star, reminded us that true journalists report both sides of a story, the "he said, she said" or "fair and balanced" reporting of opposing viewpoints. True journalists would also include some fact checking of what the person they are reporting on has said when what that person has said bears little or no resemblance to the facts, or truth.

In reading the first two reports from the AP (All Propaganda) I defy you to find the "fair and balanced" opposing viewpoints reporting by true journalists. In fact, the reporting is merely stenography for what Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann had to say, or put out in a press release and the reporter merely rearranged a few words from the press release. There is no fact checking for two politicians who cry out to be fact checked every time they open their mouth. This is not journalism.

The third report is an analysis of Associated Press-GfK polls. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com (NY Times) has done an extensive analysis to rate the pollsters. FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pollster Ratings v4.0: Methodology. While the Associated Press-Gfk poll is in the top tier of polls — there is so much bad polling out there this is not much of a claim to fame — it is not particularly accurate and I personally do not find it particularly useful in campaigns. FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Pollster Ratings v4.0: Results:

— PIE is expressed as a positive number and reflects the amount of error that a pollster introduces above and beyond that which is unavoidable due to things like sampling variance. The lower a firm's PIE the better.

The list below provides ratings for all firms with a minimum of 10 polls. A complete list of ratings (including for firms with fewer than 10 polls) follows it below the fold.

Ratings for firms with at least 10 polls

This kind of "horse race" polling a year in advance of the political party conventions and the start of the fall campaign is nothing but "filler" — it is merely entertainment for the media villagers and Beltway bloviators to engage in speculation to fill air time or column space, instead of doing their jobs: actual reporting about the candidates and, God forbid, the issues.

The Arizona Daily Star did The Arizona Republic one better and included this story Tea-party group sets multistate bus tour, by Don Thompson (AP), because at least one editor at the Star is still enamored with the Tea Party.

It reads like the reporter merely rearranged a few words from the Tea Party Express press release — but he did make a weak attempt to appear "fair and balanced" by including an obligatory quote towards the end from Joanne Gifford, president of Democrats of Napa Valley, almost as an afterthought.

Apparently this Tea Party enamored editor at the Arizona Daily Star is not aware of recent polling and a study by David E. Campbell, an associate professor of political science at Notre Dame, and Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, which show that the Tea Party is the least popular group among Americans. Study: Tea Party Is Least Popular Group:

[In] data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

The Rachel Maddow Show created a handy-dandy graphic from the data of the study.

If the Tea Party is the least popular group in America, why is it that the media villagers and Beltway bloviators in the corporate mainstream media keep talking about them and carrying water for this corporate-funded Astroturf conservative movement? The question almost answers itself.

Is it too much to ask that we can have some true journalism and reporting instead of this steady stream of propaganda from the AP all the time?