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The forced departure of the Associated Press's longtime Vermont bureau chief may be linked to his posting a partisan column by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on the AP wire.

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It means we must be fair. Whenever we portray someone in a negative light, we must make a real effort to obtain a response from that person.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I don't think this is relevent. An op ed by Leahy is his own opinion. When any political commentator makes statements there's not always a rebuttal. This item is a letter form Leahy, there's no room for someone else's comments. If Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh or Fidel Castro rights an op ed piece it doesn't get a rebuttal. In short, an op ed by Leahy is not news. It's opinion.
It seems to me that if someone is censoring the Senator from Vermont, who is an elected represntative of the people, then we have a problem.

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Leahy’s position with the government does not give him the right to ridicule with abandon. The AP should seek to balance any clearly partisan comment, as is their policy, and that clearly was not done in this case.

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As for whether that is what resulted in Graff’s resignation is debatable,

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but this does not make the AP a lackey of the Bush Administration,

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in fact all it demonstrates is the AP is not immune to the same liberal bias that plagues many other US news sources.

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I did a cursory google search of articles by Christopher Graff and found not a single article that was favorable to Republicans or Republican issues. In fact, every article I found seemed to describe the Democrats and Democratic issues. Based on what Graff had to say, one might get the impression Republicans exist as a marginal influence.

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That was based on about 15 articles searched randomly from the net, it’s by no means a scientific evaluation, but it clearly suggests that Graff, like the ~80% of journalists who voted for Kerry, is not an unbiased news reporter.

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Graff's resignation may simply be in response to a AP attempt to puncture some holes in the groupthink and possibly let some fresh air into the news rooms. I think that several newspapers, including the New York Times, may be involved in similar such self-inspection.

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I've looked all over AP's website, and nowhere do they indicate that they provide a forum for partisan op-ed pieces. They provide news and feature items to their subscribers, who are generally media outlets. Carrying Sen. Leahy's political opinion, or Fidel's or Howard's or Russ's, without rebuttal is not part of their business.

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I realize that this is not as exciting as a grand conspiracy, but trying to make this censorship is like complaining that ESPN is censoring Sen. Leahy because it didn't broadcast his last speech.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
No, it's really not. The conspiracy of unchecked executive power is not something which gives me a happy, it's a reality of grave concern. Anyone who has ever paid attention to any history ever knows that an unchecked executive is not a bellweather of freedom.

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