AP, please define "leading vote-getter"
April 14, 2009 5:10 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
Here's how the AP described the three-judge ruling from Minnesota that Al Franken had won his disputed election with Norm Coleman [emphasis added]:
A Minnesota court confirmed Monday that Democrat Al Franken won the most votes in his 2008 Senate race against Republican Norm Coleman.
And the headline:
MN court declares Franken leading vote-getter
As the Brad Blog asks, doesn't the AP really mean to say that Franken won the election?
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And I don't doubt for a second, that "vote-getter" isn't a strange and strained characterization... who would otherwise speak or write in terms of "vote-getters"?
And I'd say that the Associated Press was awful (which it is) and was destroying any former credibility they had, except that I've read Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check", and take his account (however personal) of newspapers a hundred years ago (a hundred years!) as being pretty honest, and awfully believable... and not much has changed I guess, in a hundred years (a hundred years!) at the Associated Press.
Sinclair's more relevant than ever.
I used to like P.T Anderson, too, until he deliberately excised all the politics out of his Sinclair movie--- guess economic royalists are everywhere these days. Like why would someone use Sinclair without the politics?
Ain't that the truth! I read a novel back in college, it might have been by Sinclair, about a railroad company and the laborers and their town. About halfway through the book, the lefties in the town did something corrupt and selfish. Near the end, the railroad guys, who had of course been doing far worse throughout, revealed that the labor folks had done something corrupt. Their credibility shot, the lefties lost.
The lesson? Lefties can't get away with nuthin'. Couldn't do it a century ago, can't do it now. We've gotta be honest and on the up and up ALL the time.
I'm sure that this policy is consistent with how the AP covered the Presidential race in 2000.
/snark
It really is amazing how much these people believe in the power of obvious propaganda.