Politico.com has an interesting article on the Associated Press, long the bastion of (fairly) straight, (mostly) boring news coverage that is picked up in newspapers across the country. Under Ron Fournier’s leadership, the news service is pushing livelier writing and even advocacy journalism. “Fournier and other critics of the conventional press model, especially those on the left, have said that being released from the tired conventions of news writing is exactly what journalism needs,” write Politico’s Michael Calderone. “By these lights, the mentality that presumes both sides of an argument are entitled to equal weight is what prevented the media from challenging the Bush administration more aggressively on the Iraq war and other issues.”
I have mixed feelings here. We all know that all journalism is biased. Even stories with a straight, fair tone that interview people from both sides of a dispute often have grievous biases. The main bias comes with the story selection. If a reporter writes about, say, the idea of raising taxes to reduce the deficit and quotes pro-tax and anti-tax sides, the story will lead to much different conclusions than a story that looks at budget cuts and governmental waste, then talks to two sides. The worst biases come in the agenda-setting stage of journalism — or in the stories that are not covered. That’s why I enjoy working on an opinion page. I don’t have to pretend I don’t have biases.
The good thing with the new AP style is that the biases will be out in the open. It also might lead to more interesting stories, which is necessary in the spicier Internet world. Yet, knowing how this profession operates, we can be sure that the AP stories will all start cutting in the same direction because most reporters are left-of-center. Note that the lefties are the ones promoting this renewed push for advocacy journalism. Furthermore, AP is known for its straightforward journalism approach. AP certainly has strong biases, but I wonder whether it will lose its perceived sense of fairness once its stories start sounding more like something you can read on the HuffingtonPost. On balance, this seems like a bad idea to me.
