May I suggest a slight edit to this paragraph?

"The AP goes on in their coverage to COMPLETELY largely miss the point of the entire brouhaha by pointing to "well documented" National Center for Health Statistics numbers on shorter life expectancies of "particularly male blacks", and graciously notes: "But blacks do live to become senior citizens."

Brad, give those AP reporters a little slack, will ya? It's tough sitting around all day long, day after day, waiting to see what everyone else is going to write about. Not only are they a day late and a dollar short on stories, but it would be HUMILIATING for them to have to admit that they didn't actually get the story themselves, that they got it off a yuckee blog!!!

Also, it makes it kinda hard to discredit blogs when you're ripping them off.

"Minorities liver langer and childrens do lurn" may be the banner to replace "Mission Accomplished"?

What's an AP?
: )

#4 Teritlooze,

In case you were not joking. (I am sure this response will be amusing to some of you. Just remember I might not be clear on everything, but I am absolutely serious about my opinion.)

AP (in the context of this article) is an acronym which stands for Associated Press.

Their published values are located here.

Although they claim to be an organization. (note the .ORG in their domain http://www.ap.org) I have never quite understood when or where their photos could be used. Their website has terms and conditions which seem to me like they just copyright everything they do. Which at least in my opinion seems to go against the ability to get their story out.

(for example: I personally have a show on public access television a National Cable Television Association (NCTA) member) when you look at the rules and stuff, gives us access to ASCAP and BMI with no prior agreement, but I never saw anything in there about the AP, so when I see AP Photo, I always stay away from it. I never use their stuff. But if you look closely at the AP's Archive web page You'll see...

"With over 500,000 breaking news stories gathered from the daily international output of AP Television News, plus a formidable alliance of content partners:
ABC America Sky News

Watch the AP Archive showreel.

Low bandwith, High bandwith
ABC Australia Sports News TV
Calyx TV TechTV
CCTV 20th Century Archive
CTV Canada Universal Newsreel
ITV Thailand UN and UN Agencies
KRT North Korea Vatican TV
RTR Russia WWF Archive"

Clearly they are attached to the hip to at least ABC, which when you add that to all the "for profit information" links on their websites:
Buy AP News | Buy AP Photos | Buy AP Video | Buy AP Audio | Buy AP Books | Careers | Shop AP Essentials

It makes me question how they are actually non profit. And if they are not non-profit how they can actually have unbiased news as per their "Mission Statement thingy"

Anyway, I don't really care because they apparently seem to be better off than I am. While you can see they have everything for sale, including their news, my show actually COSTS ME money (that's a negative cash flow) and then I give it away freely. And it ain't like I am out there grinding the pavement in war torn countries trying to get photos for the corporate media to spin in the favor of the corrupt Bush administrations goals.

On the other hand we have the WIKI definition of AP:

"The Associated Press, or AP, is an American news agency, and is the world's largest such organization. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, who both contribute stories to it and use material written by its staffers. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers "” that is, they pay a fee to use AP material but are not members of the cooperative."

In my opinion they have some of the best photos and crazy ass shots I ever seen, I wouldn't want to be standing where some of their photos were taken from, but on the other hand to what agenda does this get content get used to brainwash the American People?

As I already said, I don't use their copyrighted photos, (unless someone tricks me, by republishing something they stole, and made it look like it was theirs) and by writing this response to you about what is the AP and learning more than I care to learn about them, I don't think I WANT to be friends with them, as I don't see that it's clear they have "We The People of The United States of America's" best interest at hand.

And another thing I don't understand, why do they publish their photos on the web if they claim so much copyright? Seems to me they'd want to keep that crap locked up in a vault somewhere.

This is some of the weird crap I do not understand about Corporate media. A cooperative to me seems like a good idea, but with the behavior and blackout censorship and propaganda that the corporate media is currently pumping and dumping, I fail to see how this is in the public's interest.

that's my final thought.

And out of context of this thread, actually there is also a band out there called the "A.P. Collective."