As several folks (including myself) have noted, the AP has established a couple of new practices that undermine its claim to independent, objective and reliable reporting. It's not just the practice of publishing articles before events happen. The use of "Analysis" to posture as "news" completely blurs the lines between reporting and opining.
This morning I was surprised to see this pop up as a headline Analysis:McCain talks unity while allies attack. It sounds like something that AP would put out, but it appears to be attributed to "RNC News" which confused me. After all, why would Yahoo! blatantly take on the roll of stenographer for the Republican National Committee and publish press releases as if they were actual news?
I clicked on the link and this is where I landed....
Update: As pointed out in comments, the RNC link is separated by a | indicating it is not an attribution, just incredibly ironic. Maybe Yahoo! is doing its own editorializing.
The article itself is classic Fournier. You can see it here and here. I put the two links in because the first will decay over time, but for now it will show the propagation of this "news" as seen through the eyes of Ron Fournier.
What I love about his pretzel logic is how classically Republican it is:
The fierceness of McCain's surrogates allowed him to serve up red meat to his partisan convention crowd while keeping his hands unbloodied. The next night he stood before the country as a statesman-in-waiting, pledging to reach across the same partisan divide that his allies had widened.
And he was able to call himself a maverick, and define the term without a whiff of irony: "What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you."
I guess "irony" isn't what it used to be either.