More AP Fournier Follies

(I may be able to squeeze in a couple after all…I’ll try.)

So the AP’s Ron Fournier tells us here that Karl Rove should “keep up the fight,” meaning that Rove should continue to ignore congressional subpoenas and thus break the law (with Fournier noting after he was caught that he “regretted the breezy nature of the correspondence”).

Well, in a category you might call “breezy attempts at journalism,” I give you Fournier’s take on the nomination of Hangin’ Judge J.R. as Supreme Court Chief Justice here (my bad for not citing the original story, which I can’t find now as luck would have it), in which Fournier tells us that “a summer (of 2005) spent in the spotlight turned up no warts on the nominee,” even though there was ample fodder to protest the Roberts nomination here.

Also, Fournier used the pardon of “Scooter” Libby to attack the Clintons here, repeatedly asked John W. McBush if he thought Barack Obama was “an elitist” here, mischaracterized the controversy over Dubya’s warrantless spying here (just those bad Bush-hating liburuuls fightin’ the pre-see-dent whose tryin’ to keep us safe frum tha' terrists…), and claimed that a “Democratic interest group” aired an ad comparing Bush to Hitler here, through there are at least two issues with that statement: 1) Moveon is not funded by the Democratic Party and, though often sympathetic to that organization, is not an officially sanctioned outlet, and 2) the ad Fournier mentioned never aired, but was removed from the competition because (in a testimony to the good judgment of Moveon’s members) no one voted for it.

If Fournier is paid to be a propagandist, he is doing exemplary work. However, if he’s paid to be a somewhat legitimate MSM journalist, then he is stealing from his employer.

Update 7/28/08: More from Eric Boehlert (h/t Atrios).

Update 7/29/08: Curiouser and curiouser...

Update 9/2/08: And how sad is it that a news organization has to issue talking points to defend its Washington bureau chief against charges of bias?