Columnist: AP 'Has Lost Its Rudder'

In today's Boston Herald, columnist Jules Crittenden calls on the mainstream media to confront the Associated Press over its "shoddy work:"

When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.

That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.

The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.

Crittenden isn't just talking about the recent flap over bogus Iraqi "police captain" Jamil Hussein; he cites a pattern of slipshod and outright anti-American reporting from the wire service.

The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.

Crittenden also reminds us that the Associated Press has been trying to cover up the fact that their photographer, Bilal Hussein, is in custody because he was captured red-handed in an al Qaeda terrorist facility.