Writing Sen. Joe Biden's (D-Del.) recent suggestion that it's "patriotic" to pay higher taxes, Associated Press reporter Douglass K. Daniel provided a bit of cover for the Obama running mate by citing a left-leaning tax group and ignoring Obama's plans to hike capital gains taxes.:
Douglass K. Daniel
By Ken Shepherd | September 18, 2008 | 12:45 PM EDT
By Tom Blumer | July 19, 2008 | 7:18 AM EDT 
The fallout that began a week ago after the publication of the Associated Press's Tony Snow obituary continues.
The fallout that began a week ago after the publication of the Associated Press's Tony Snow obituary continues. Fox News's Bill O'Reilly took his concerns about it to the top of AP, and didn't like the response he received. He shouldn't.
In his column this morning at Townhall.com, he also reaches a conclusion about the self-described "Essential Global News Network" that is becoming increasingly difficult to deny.
By Tom Blumer | July 18, 2008 | 1:26 AM EDT
After the firestorm that erupted Saturday over the Associated Press's classless story on the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, I was hoping that the possibly-chastened wire service could get through its coverage of his funeral without getting in any gratuitous digs.
In that horrid Saturday story (blogged at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the AP's Douglass K. Daniel, with the assistance of longtime Bush basher Jennifer Loven, felt it necessary, within hours of Snow's passing, to characterize him as "not always (having) a command of the facts," questioning reporters' motives "as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing," and turning his briefings into "personality-driven media event(s) short on facts and long on confrontation." In a further descent into tastelessness, they felt it necessary to tell us what Snow's salary at the White House was -- something I don't believe I have ever seen written in a story on anyone else's death. (11:00 a.m. update: See this comment below for an exception.)
Covering Snow's funeral Thursday, AP reporter Ben Feller stayed classy almost to the end. But then he apparently couldn't help himself, and followed the execrable example of his Saturday predecessors in his story's third-last paragraph.