Will Ron Fournier break out his abacus again?
September 05, 2008 11:02 am ET by Jamison Foser
Last week, in an apparent effort to paint Sen. Hillary Clinton as self-absorbed, the AP's Ron Fournier counted the number of times she used "some variation of the pronoun 'I'" in her convention speech. Fournier came up with 17. Media Matters checked his work, and found 21 such uses. But Fournier's point was undermined by the fact that at least 13 of those uses of the pronoun were about Clinton's support for Obama, the importance of the 2008 election, or what matters in the election.
So ... when can we expect Fournier to tally up the number of times John "cause greater than self" McCain used the pronoun "I" in his convention speech? It's well over 100 -- and that doesn't even count variations.
Or has Ron Fournier suddenly realized that such an exercise would be pointless? He'd be right, but you have to wonder about the timing of his epiphany.
Thanks for reminding us of the stupid tactics Ron Fournier uses to try to undermine Democrats which he doesn't apply to Republicans.
AP, as you have repeatedly noted, does this a lot. What concerns me, as a journalist, is that, in allowing this sort of behavior to run amok from their reporters and bureau chiefs, they are destroying what used to be an at least somewhat reliable "brand." It's getting where I question every AP story I read now, by any AP reporter on any topic. Here's a blog entry I posted about another recent AP outrage:
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?aid=9515
Just why are they even still carping on Clinton, isn't Obama the candidate ?
Oh never mind, I know its because they haven't a clue.
Fournier is a hack.
I was surprised to see any critical reporting from the AP.
I agree that Fournier's a hack, but I wouldn't call the exercise pointless. Research shows that use of first-person pronouns is related to higher degrees of self-focus. Granted, the reliability and meaningfulness of the number in a case study like this is tenuous. But whether Fournier actually knew it or not, use of first person is an ever-so-small window into people's thought processes (although in this case, I guess it's the speech writer's more than the speaker's).
or, when was the last McCain public speech over 2 minutes when he didn't mention or refer to the time he was a POW?
I think it's sad, really insulting to him, that his own VP is unaware that McCain doesn't have any business experience on his resume, yet she brings it up every time she speaks.