When will they stop?
In an exchange between CNN’s Brian Stelter and Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of the Associated Press Julie Pace, the latter was asked by the former to “name the biggest stories of the year,” which he believed should go “beyond the pandemic,” if that was possible.
The exchange, which took place on CNN’s Reliable Sources, highlighted a bias among two of the world’s largest news organizations –– the Associated Press and Reuters. In the broadcast, Brian Stelter asks Pace if the AP would name the biggest stories of the year. Pace answers the question by saying that the biggest story of 2021 was “the January 6th insurrection,” before adding that in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, the AP would “really focus on” the insurrection.
Pace also emphasized that the coverage by the news organization –– whose content is republished by 15,000 news outlets worldwide –– wouldn’t only focus on “the event itself,” but rather what it “symbolized about threats to democracy and what is happening in the United States.”
She went on to say that the organization wanted to “be really clear with people about the threats we are seeing to democratic institutions,” adding that the AP wanted to expose “who is behind them, expose the money and the forces, the powerful forces that are behind these efforts.”
Stelter then queried if the AP would portray the GOP as extremists trying to destroy American democracy, asking if the AP would “call out GOP extremism for what it is?” Pace’s answer made it seem as though she was on board, as the executive editor answered in the affirmative, saying that the AP had “been extremely clear” when writing about the “realities of the 2020 election.” Pace elaborated by saying, “every time we wrote a story [AP Journalists insisted 2020] was a free and fair election.”
