Fox News Really Is Fair and Balanced

But only compared to Associated Press.

Today, AP's resident douchebag Ron Fournier has a recycled McCain press release piece titled Analysis: Biden pick shows lack of confidence. The title is obviously one of those wingnut Mad Libs type deals, with the template "Analysis: _____ pick shows lack of _______" ready to fill in as soon as Obama gave them a name (Bayh/principle, Hillary/cojones, Gore/sanity, etc.).

And if you think I'm being overly harsh on poor Mr. Fournier, I suggest you read the backstory at AmericaBlog and Media Matters. Fournier may not have taken that job with the McCain campaign, but he's working for them anyway.

Update: Fournier's known biases aside, the problem with the story is that it assumes the worst possible interpretation and presents it as fact. There are a lot of different things the Biden pick 'shows' about Obama (and his campaign): that he's secure enough not not to worry about being upstaged, for example; that he figures a known, familiar quantity like Biden will offset the 'exotic' factor; that he's looking for a strong, credible attack dog. Any of these could have been the headline for an 'analysis' like Fournier's. A real analysis, in the on-the-one-hand tradition (which is of course deeply problematic, but is better than what we get here), would discuss all of them. Fournier either took his own visceral negative reaction and ran with it, or printed the story 'suggested' to him by his friends at McCain HQ.