Associated Press spins, spins, spins on Blanco's document release

Check out these two Associated Press articles on the documents Governor Blanco released.

The earlier article, titled "Documents Show Katrina's Political Storm" (released Sat Dec 3,11:30 PM ET) is pretty much a straightforward timeline and includes a few quotes from the e-mails and letters.

Oops. A straightforward timeline? Doesn't make Chimpy's behavior during Katrina look so good.

So now we have the NEW AND IMPROVED Associated Press angle in the form of an article titled: "E-Mails Show How Katrina Swamped La. Gov."!(released Sun Dec 4, 8:48 AM ET)

Yes, indeed. This shiny new article includes such gems as:

The correspondence also shows that Blanco staffers also sought to boost her image and debunk rumors about rampant violence.

"FYI, the shooting of looters in Jefferson Parish is still unconfirmed," said an e-mail message from a state police lieutenant to Bob Mann, Blanco's communications director, four days after the storm struck.

(because setting the record straight is all about boosting the image, dontchaknow.)

And then there's:

Typo-laden e-mail messages deal with improving the public's perception of Blanco, who in the early days of the crisis appeared on television looking stricken and grim, and once wept during a news conference. In response, her aides sought ways to play up her strengths, even while the news media continued broadcasting images of thousands of people waiting to be rescued.

"We need to show the public that we've moved x number of people ... That all the shelters in La are full," speechwriter Chris Frink wrote in a Sept. 3 e-mail. "TV is giving the public a view of this entire crisis based on small, limited perspextives."

(Because telling the country that all the Louisiana shelters are full had NOTHING...I repeat, NOTHING...to do with informing the rest of the country that Louisiana needed immediate help.)

Gotta hand it to the Associated Press--they moved quickly to ratify their mistake telling the unvarnished facts.

'Cause facts have NO PLACE in our current Media Whoredom.


edited because: As pointed out in the following post, it ain't Yahoo. Both articles are, however, from the AP.

Yahoo news retransmits material from different press agencies. They don't write it. Some stuff can be pretty biased, OK. But I haven't any statistical proof that there is more biased material on Yahoo than anywhere else (probably less). You can read the Huffington post, Wonkette etc.. on Yahoo.

Most of the news material comes from Reuters, AP and AFP. Reuters is British, AFP is French. The report you name comes from AP, the only American press agency.

as both articles are from AP.