Journalism professor Joe Cutbirth calls the AP on its craven submission to the Bush progandists yesterday:
The White House gave you the information with a specific purpose. It wanted to see if national media would buy the frame "Bush to announce troop cuts." And the national media did, as the Kansas City Star and others showed today by running the follow-up that bears the Lee and Flaherty byline.
The government that is running this war wanted to make sure that the story that comes from the president's speech on Thursday isn't framed or given the more precise and accurate headline "Bush to continue surge for at least another year." And the AP happily obliged.
In return for a feed, the AP gave the government a lede and frame its propagandists desperately need to sell a war Americans overwhelmingly want to end. The AP confirmed to the propagandists that their frame is plausible -- at least to the Associated Press.
And by virtue of the role the AP plays in American media, the frame and the word "reduce" were distributed to virtually every newspaper and most television stations in the country yesterday.
