Update: AP Still Won’t Acknowledge Both Sides of Wis. Supreme Court Judges’ Altercation
Given a chance to revise and extend its 9:58 a.m. report (covered this afternoon at NewsBusters ; at BizzyBlog ) on the June 13 altercation between Wisconsin Supreme Court Judges David Prosser, Jr. and Ann Walsh Bradley, the Associated Press's 5:29 p.m. version persists in telling its national audience only one side of the story. Although the fact is that accounts as to who was the aggressor completely differ, the wire service's oddly unbylined story (a 650-word AP item usually has a byline — it's almost as if someone doesn't want their name on it) will cause its readers, including subscribing news outlets around the country, to believe that the only open question is whether and how hard Prosser choked Bradley. One suspects that AP's “fairness” defense will be the employment of these three words in Paragraph 8: “While accounts differ …” Sorry guys, that doesn't cut it when the accounts are totally opposite. Here are excerpts from that AP report ( saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes): A member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's liberal faction has accused a conservative justice of choking her during an argument in her office earlier this month – a charge he denied.
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on June 26, 2011. Filed under