Tom Kent

NPR, AP Bowing to Pressure on Terms: 'Please Avoid Overusing "Obamacare"'
By Tim Graham | October 4, 2013 | 11:34 AM EDT

Andrew Beaujon of Poynter MediaWire reports that NPR standards editor Stuart Seidel asked reporters and editors to “please avoid overusing ‘Obamacare’” after the Maynard Institute’s minority-journalism blogger Richard Prince wrote him saying “the term can no longer be defended as neutral.” Prince said Obama isn't using "Obamacare" in recent speeches.

Seidel explained "I’m not persuaded that the use of 'Obamacare' is wholly inappropriate, but I am persuaded that good effort needs [to be] made to avoid over-using it. I’m sharing that feeling with NPR's editors and correspondents."

AP Acknowledges Mistake Supporting #StandWithWendy But Does Not Issue Apology to Readers
By Matthew Sheffield | July 17, 2013 | 5:00 PM EDT

The Associated Press, the most powerful and widely used wire service in the world, decided last week to lend its support to the extremist views of Texas state senator Wendy Davis by utlizing a Twitter hashtag #StandWithWendy used by her supporters.

After pro-life bloggers called attention to the tweet, AP deleted the tweet from its official timeline but the wire service has still not apologized for its action.

AP Internal Memo: 'Combat in Iraq Is Not Over'
By Tom Blumer | September 4, 2010 | 10:18 AM EDT
APlogo0409What follows indicates that at least one limit has been found to the establishment press's willingness to serve as this government's official apologists.

Not surprisingly, it relates to Iraq. The press obviously and bitterly opposed the war from the start, to the point of doctoring photographs, making stuff up, pretending that its sources knew what they were talking about when they didn't, and ignoring enemy atrocities and Saddam Hussein's mass graves for years, while often having their journalistic failures and biases exposed by milbloggers and bloggers. So if one were to have guessed ahead of time where a clear break might occur, Iraq would have been a leading choice.

That break comes in an AP email to staff from "Standards Editor" Tom Kent. He must have or at least should have known that its contents would get out. Jim Romenesko at Poynter Online (HT Legal Insurrection) appears to have posted it first, about 16 hours after Kent hit the "send" button:

Subject: Standards Center guidance: The situation in Iraq

Colleagues,

... we should be correct and consistent in our description of what the situation in Iraq is. This guidance summarizes the situation and suggests wording to use and avoid.