Dear AJC: Your Lack Of Skepticism Shows Democratic Bias
To quote the late President Ronald Reagan: “There you go again…”
Last week, the AJC had a front page story on the dust up over a bus from “Black Votes Matter” stating the organization is non-partisan. Their own website links to a C-4 political organization that has engaged in independent expenditures against a Republican candidate. In fact, the website says this: “Although not a major aspect of our operations, BVMF will on occasion fund activities related to specific elections.” So they’re non-partisan. Until they don’t want to be. How convenient.
It wasn’t that long ago that we had the issue of the group Better Georgia being referred to as an “independent, non-partisan” group regularly in AJC stories, but our old site was being referred to as a “right wing” website. Nevermind the fact of having a member of the State Democratic Committee as an Editor and about one-third of our contributors being partisan Democratic/left of center. The AJC had also covered Better Georgia as a group that was dedicated to turning Georgia Blue. It seemed they could be whatever the AJC wanted them to be to suit the purpose of whatever needed to be written that day.
We get it. You have a narrative: Democratic candidates are “historic”. History is on their side, even if it’s their candidates’ supporters that are actually shouting candidates down because of their race, and the candidate won’t condemn it.
But you do you.
The rest of us would just ask that we get less biography and more acts of journalism. That requires skepticism, even with those you’re inclined to agree with.
About Author
nsmith
Father. IT Geek. Former 14th District GOP Chairman (2015-2017). Former Walker GOP Chairman (2009-2013). Resident of Chamblee. American. Georgian. Conservative.
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It’s been a long slow slide into the blender and now its almost impossible to separate news/journalism from opinion/editorial.
These voter suppression stories need skeptical review. Take the 53k registration applications on hold. All we ever heard was “AP Study”. How many of those applications did AP review? How does AP know that 70% (a nice round number) were black people? These stories are uncritically accepted by the national media, which love to post Honey Boo Boo stories about Georgia elections.
Maybe some of the info is in the original piece? But you could review all 53K with three people in one day.
I’m guessing the applicants themselves checked off their racial identity on the application (instead of opting-out).
I’m guessing they rounded the numbers, but that it was between 68 and 72%.
But who has all the exact info? I assume the SoS does. Has he released any info or analysis on it? If not, why the hell not? Skepticism.
I’m inclined to think the presentation of the information is likely to be a bit slanted, but that’s something that sells news. It doesn’t help either since right-wingers latch it to their fair and balanced alternate fear-based reality.
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Mideastern terrorists in the caravan from Latin American? There’s no more evidence of that than North Korea ramping up its nuclear program, but you don’t hear Republicans inciting fear about the latter..
That’s all you got?
That’s all you got?
No rebuttal, no points otherwise?
Too voluminous to bother with.
Then why even comment? What did you add to the conversation?
The point that if that’s all you got, it’s practically nothing.
All 501c4s have the ability to do this. They can’t be more than 49% partisan (based on expenditures as one measure), so assuming that, they will always be mostly “non-partisan” despite being even 49% partisan. “Independence” is something different, however, and refers to coordinating with campaign committees. But since every contributor, Board member, officer, staff will have their opinion and political history, what you get is always going to be biased cherry-picking based upon both the picker and the cherries. And organizational history of both also plays a big part.
I would like to see more detailed breakdown of spending, too, and would welcome detail like 49% of their budget is spent on Dem or Repub candidates. If only the reading electorate appreciated that detail and honesty, maybe the media would make the investment. But when folks buy lies and are happy to buy the lies…
As long as the AJC (or any of our Georgia news outlets) continue to only cover the two major parties, as if they were our only option, we all lose.
Back in the days when your town might only have one or two newspapers and maybe 3 TV stations, it was important for those outlets to either be unbiased or be pretty clear where they were coming from. These days, with 1000 different ways to get and check stories, I think we all have to have a grain of salt with whatever we read from any one source.
But anyway, I suppose it’s possible that if there was a GOP group dedicated to increasing African-American voter turnout, they just might link to them too.
There is a Georgia Black Republican Council. The GAGOP is actively involved in minority outreach.
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Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said “GOP group”, because it’s not like they have affiliated with the Dem party.
Their mission is to increase AA voter turnout. The Council’s mission doesn’t match up well with that as far as I can see, but maybe there is some other ‘conservative’ group that would include that among their mission?
Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom coalition is also “nonpartisan”. Yet I still receive mailers from them demonizing each and every Democrat. The Tea Party Patriots… The whole “nonpartisan” thing on all of these 501xx organizations is a joke and you knew it when you posted this Nathan.
That’s the crux. If you really think this is a problem then you need to change the 501 C laws and who enacted those laws? The GOP did IIRC.
AJC’s “lack of skepticism” concerns you, but the NRA running radio ads with a rape in the background is just hunky dory.