Sam Hananel

AP Coverage of Govt. Union Membership Report 'Somehow' Omits Organized Percentage of Public Sector
By Tom Blumer | January 21, 2011 | 3:19 PM EST

I was reading Associated Press reporter Sam Hananel's coverage ("Unions see sharp membership declines again") of Uncle Sam's latest report on union membership, and I came to this paragraph about what happened with private-sector union representation in 2010:

Union membership in the private sector fell from 7.2 percent to 6.9 percent, a low point not seen since the infancy of the labor movement in the 1930s. The steepest decline was seen in the construction industry, where unemployment remains around 20 percent.

Naturally, I expected to see Hananel's reportage next address what happened in the public sector. As you'll see, readers only got half of what they should have been told:

AP Report on 'Card Check' Status Laden With Biased-Charged Words and Anonymous Sources
By Tom Blumer | July 19, 2009 | 11:59 PM EDT
OnStrikeNo one can finish Saturday's report by Sam Hananel of the Associated Press without knowing the side of the political aisle on which he resides (surprise -- not -- it's decidedly on the left), and that he is more sympathetic to the interests of organized labor than he is to those of management at non-union firms.

Additionally, no one can doubt that Hananel, and perhaps his editor(s), have little respect for AP's stated policies of relying on more than one source, attempting to avoid anonymous sources, and when using them, clearly describing "the source's motive for disclosing the information."

That's a pretty remarkable achievement for a roughly 750-word report.

First, here are three word choice examples that give away Hananel's political biases: