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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Is This Right?

It is certainly anyone’s right to take a position on anything in this election.
But if AP is runinng a columnist who is taking a position, shouldn’t the piece be labelled as “commentary” and not simply published as though it is the same kind of straight news that AP offers most of the time?
Calvin Woodward runs an anti-Obama take on the Obama infomercial, claiming to be a “fact check,”
when if you read the fact checks, most of the “false” information is based on, admittedly, opinions about the details and not actual false facts.
Anyway… I’m not concerned about this guy going out under the AP header… only that his work is not marked clearly as commentary, which agree with it or not, is exactly what it is.

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3 Responses to “Is This Right?”

  1. mysteryperfecta says:

    Because the article labels some of Obama’s positions as “spin”, it’s “anti-Obama”? Also, you put the word “false” in your piece, inferring that that the journalist said it. He didn’t. Putting words in his mouth is cheap and false. The FACT is, some of Obama’s assertions don’t hold up to independent scrutiny. That puts Obama in the same company as every other politician I’ve ever seen.
    As for the claim that some AP articles take positions under the guise of a ‘straight’ news story– I agree. I’ve noticed it on several occasions.

  2. David Poland says:

    Even if it is 100% right, it seems pretty clearly anti-Obama.
    And I don’t object at all to AP running opinion… they should just mark it clearly.

  3. Chucky in Jersey says:

    AP’s Washington bureau chief was offered a high-level job in the McCain campaign.
    Coincidentally the Obama broadcast outdrew Game 5 of the World Series. (For those outside North America, the game that was suspended Monday night by heavy rain.)

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon