Watchdog Journalism Scratches Me Where I Itch

The Associated Press is often given the burden of investigatory and enterprise reporting without the "credit," because so often their scoops are picked up the organizations we traditionally assocatiate with news-gathering: newspapers and, to a lesser extent, radio and TV. But the AP traditionally has more resources devoted to enterprise reporting because the agency needs not cover City Council meetings and other more pedestrian newspaper necessitites. So whenever the AP does well, it's nice to give them the credit. (I've done so already on this blog, actually, during the Cheney's Got a Gun saga.)

In any case, here's a piece that a White House press corps reporter may be a bit gun-shy about pursuing: Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches. Forget for a second that its a point Jon Stewart has been hammering his audience with for months now. This is an analytical piece that needed to be written, a bit of common sense injected into a national politic currently fraught with hogwash and bombast. I hope this AP story ends up running in a whole bunch of papers as this semantical argument favored by Bush personally drives me wild. Bravo, AP writer, for taking the close look.