By Tim Redmond
Newspapers that subscribe to wire services like AP have the right to condense, edit, and pretty much use the material any way they want. The results can be telling.
Witness the AP story that ran today on Jerry Brown’s campaign for governor.
You can read what appears to be the full, unedtied version here.
Then there’s the version that ran in the print edition of the Examiner. You can find that by going here and paging through to p. 17.
I got an interesting email from h. brown on the two stories. His analysis:
What was cut:
“Obama [won] the biggest margin of victory in a
California presidential election since at least
WW II.”Praise for Brown:
“opening government for women and minorities”
“Democratic party becoming increasingly diverse”
[The original story] said that Brown is: “famously independent”
The Examiner editors changed it to:
“famously erratic personality and propensity
for outlandish statements”
Again: Nothing out of the ordinary here at all, editors do this stuff every day. But it’s an interesting window into how media bias shows up in the most subtle little ways.