Coming home from the hardware story I listened to one of the RW propaganda shills on local talk radio. Down here in Clear Channel country, Right Wing is the only wing.
The local shill (his name is Bud Heddiger) was interviewing a reporter on the scene in Texas.
She broke in talking about the horrifying scene of the bus fire in Dallas, reported to have killed 24 so far. (She also mentioned that twice as many people evacuated as had been ordered to do so.)
Our local shill tried to steer her off the topic until she said: "that horrific scene is probably the image most people will remember about this hurricane."
He then disconnected her ("sorry, your cell phone is breaking up").
"We've already talked about that," the shill explained, "but she [the reporter] didn't know. I think we've covered that topic enough, frankly, and what I want to know..."
Off on another topic.
I changed to our other local talk station just in time to hear Hannity praise the "nearly flawless evacuation of four million people." I turned off the radio.
When I got home, at 4 p.m. (ET), I checked the AP wire.
At 4 p.m. AP was running this story (and no other about the event):
Bus Carrying Evacuees Catches Fire; 1 Dead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 23, 2005
Filed at 8:17 a.m. ET
DALLAS (AP) -- A bus filled with Hurricane Rita evacuees caught fire early Friday on gridlocked Interstate 45, killing at least one person and injuring others, a television station reported.
The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a 17-mile backup on a freeway that was already heavily congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. Dallas television station WFAA reported one person was killed and 12 were injured.
(Sorry to run the whole report, but it's entirely germane to this criticism).
In dKos world the bus fire story is yesterday's news, but Reuters is still running the story on its front page, as is BBC News,, and CNN.com still has video on its front page.
As I write this, it's now 4:30 and AP is still reporting, as its only story:
Bus Carrying Evacuees Catches Fire; 1 Dead
AP has five hurricane stories among the first 10 in their queue (one of which is hilariously headed, "Bush Pledges to Keep Close Eye on Rita," but my favorite, titled, "U.S.: Policy to Unite Iraq is Working," proves someone at AP reads The Onion).
Regardless, does it seem like AP covering up the bus fire story? Or have I been abducted by aliens and reconstituted in some absurd parallel universe?
Correction: See joeincognito's post below, to wit:
AP followed its initial story on the fire with seven updates in barely 90 minutes, including confirmation of at least 20 dead within 40 minutes of the first report. There were three more updates in the following several hours, plus the central facts of the episode were woven promptly into AP's main Rita stories.
...while I go mow the lawn.