They Can't Stop Themselves

Once the bias genie is out of the bottle, it pretty much stays out. And, being a vaporous, malodorous sort of thing, the bias genie starts to seep into everything, like a house built on a landfill.

In this case the stinky house is the AP. Saw a headline today about the Washington Times laying off staff. First thought in my head? 'How long before they call the paper "conservative"'?

I wasn't disappointed.

Washington Times slashes staff; sports section out

They did manage to control themselves until most of the way through when this just had to find its way in there: "The Times is often viewed as the conservative alternative to the much larger Washington Post."

So predictable. I guess you could assume they are implying in a backhanded sort of way that the Post is liberal (which it is...in spades), but they certainly don't say that.

But then another thought crept in...'Hey, didn't the NY Times just lay a bunch of people off? Wonder how the AP covered that.'

Sure enough...

NY Times lays off 18 workers in newsroom cutbacks

Go ahead and read it as many times as you like...you won't find the word 'liberal' anywhere. You'll note that I found as near-equal stories from the AP on identical topics within days of each other as possible. Both focused on staff cuts. Both un-bylined AP stories. Both the version they put on Yahoo! Finance.

This house smells funny, don't you think?

In somewhat related news...for how long do you think the press can go on running headlines to the effect of "jobless claims drop unexpectedly"? It seems several cycles have now passed with this headline...basically you incorrectly assume initial jobless claims will be X, when they come in a couple of thousand less than X you call that "unexpected" and then you report how the numbers from the previous period were revised upward so that they end up about what was expected. Then, sure enough, next reporting period it's all "unexpected" again.

Sheesh.