The Associated Press is proud of its reputation. When you go to the AP website, this sentence starts the second paragraph in the “About us” page:
AP’s mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.
And yet, in today’s news analysis about the Democrats bad week, Charles Babington wrote, and his editor let stand, this insult to the Tea Party movement that has swept America:
Also, it’s not clear that Republicans can tame and harness the volatile “tea bagger” activists. The fiercely independent conservatives helped Brown win in Massachusetts, but they triggered a damaging right-wing split in a special House race in New York last year. <– This was a unifying event – Volubrjotr
The fact that they put the epithet in quotes indicates that they know full well that “teabagger” is a vulgar term. I never knew it existed before the so-called objective media types (we mean you, Anderson Cooper) were calling Tea Party activists “teabaggers.”
It is a deliberate insult. It is not the way an objective news organization should describe the millions of Americans from all walks of life who attended rallies and town halls to protest the expansion of government by this administration and congress.
The AP owes the Tea Party movement a retraction and an apology. And I really think that the people who don’t like the Tea Partiers (see, that wasn’t too hard to call them, was it?) should stop mainstreaming “teabagger.” It’s childish and reflects more poorly on those that use the word rather than on those they are insulting.
Act like an objective news organization, AP. Don’t mainstream “teabagger.”
Political Vel Craft 