Cry Harder, AP.
Stop your whining, AP.
No one is censoring your news service. No one is interfering with your free speech rights. You’re free to continue to spew left-wing garbage. The only thing that’s changed is where you get to sit when you hear the President speak.
I never get invited to the Oval Office. I’ve never flown with POTUS on Air Force One.,
You don’t hear me complaining.
Perhaps you heard, the Associated Press has defiantly announced that it is refusing to refer to that body of water that laps the borders of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as the “Gulf of America” despite the fact that an executive order #14172 officially made the change
AP has chosen to die on this hill out of its profound loathing of Donald Trump. But as the saying goes, FAFO.
In return, President Trump invited some reporters into the Oval Office this week and didn’t invite the AP White House correspondent. That reporter also lost his or her seat on Air Force One.
Boo hoo. Life is tough.
It’s worth remembering that the Associated Press considers itself the language police for print news in America and as such is constantly changing the acceptable verbiage.
Wikipedia describes the AP Stylebook this way:
The AP Stylebook, also known by its full name The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, is an English grammar style and usage guide created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Press.…rules for usage as well as styles for capitalization, abbreviation, spelling and numerals.
Journalists have a more succinct description: The bible.
When I left The Virginian-Pilot in 2017, I took with me the copy of the AP Stylebook that I got when I was hired. Back then it was also a “Libel Manual.” The copyright on mine is 1984. Outdated in a million ways but still useful when trying to remember the difference between homicide and murder and when to use “cement” and when to use “concrete.”
Newspapers are under no obligation to follow the AP rules, but most do.
For many years, the AP Stylebook dealt mainly with matters of grammar and spelling. In recent years, it has relentlessly pushed wokeism.
A few years ago, for instance, there was this nonsensical edict: the word black, when referring to African-Americans, is capitalized. White, when referring to caucasians, is not.
The explanation:
AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person. AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses.
Any publication not subscribing to the Upper-Case-B rule risks being called racist, which is why papers were quick to adopt the change.
In a bizarre move to drain all the color out of news stories, the AP also decreed that “mistress” was the wrong way to describe women who sleep with other females’ husbands.”
Actually, I prefer to call them whores. But that’s just me.
There was this terse caution from the AP during the George Floyd riots:
Use care in deciding which term best applies: A riot is a wild or violent disturbance of the peace involving a group of people. The term riot suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium…
Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”
In more recent years, AP has been trans-cautious, demanding that newspapers not call folks “biological males or females.” Instead, they are told to use the stupid term: “sex assigned at birth.”
Oh, and the AP demands that newspapers use the pronouns preferred by people pretending to be a member of the opposite sex and that writers refrain from “deadnaming” trans people.
Sigh.
Of course in 2023 when Joe Biden’s Defense Department renamed military bases that had monikers honoring Confederates, the AP was eager to make the name changes and did so with alacrity.
But when the Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America last month? No dice. The AP dug in.
Someone please remind the AP that governments get to do the naming of cities and towns and bodies of water. The titles didn’t come down from the Almighty.
Trump has renamed the Gulf and that seems an easy call.
So as long as the AP refuses to use the new legal name of the Gulf, Trump plans to freeze the AP out of limited-space press encounters.
“They’re doing us no favors and I guess I am not doing them any favors, that’s the way life works,” Trump said.
Cry harder, AP.
