The Associated Press generally falls in lockstep with its peers on the Left, tempering its news reports with an unhealthy dose of liberal bias. But every now and then, the veteran wire service falters — and when it does, the liberal press pounces with fangs and claws bared.
Exhibit A is a tweet from the AP summarizing a pair of reactions to the murder last Friday of basketballer Dwyane [sic] Wade’s cousin. One of the “reactors” was GOP nominee Donald Trump, and the other was Wade himself. Here’s the tweet:
https://twitter.com/AP/status/769586615949914112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Tommy Christopher of Mediaite devoted a column to a sampling of outraged retweets by libs who were themselves apoplectic that the AP would dare to mention Trump and Wade in the same breath:
This is an awful tweet. Awful, @AP. And if you don't realize why, then that's the problem https://t.co/RX4pOHuyXR
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) August 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/AP/status/769586615949914112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
But it's not even "both sides". It's one family member mourning and this horrible person having a Breit-gasm over her death.
— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) August 27, 2016
AP’s second offense was its much publicized report that more than half of the individuals Hillary Clinton met with from private interests were Clinton Foundation donors. CNN tore the AP a new one. Reporter Dylan Byers dashed off an story titled “Associated Press botches Hillary Clinton report and response.” Byers admonishes:
Hillary Clinton is surrounded by suggestions of controversy. Terms like “Clinton Foundation,” “email server,” and “Benghazi” hover around her like a faint smoke that hints at the existence of fire.
But finding the fire — the lie, the misdeed, the unethical act — is proving to be rather difficult, as evidenced this week by an inaccurate tweet and arguably misleading story from the Associated Press that were quickly rebutted by the Clinton campaign and dismissed by many media outlets.
Here’s the “inaccurate tweet,” which I will grant is misleading insofar as it fails to specify that the meetings in question were but a subset of Clinton’s meetings during her tenure as secretary.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/768166957728358400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
But the AP story itself is unimpeachable in its accuracy. The rebuttal by Clinton’s team, moreover, was the usual denial of any wrongdoing and nothing more.
