General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The AP desperately needs to get its shit together and start existing in the 21st Century… [View all]calimary
(80,693 posts)Owned by its member stations and newspapers. They all pay a fee as members. Internally that's what they're referred to: "members." Nobody ever described or referred to them as "affiliates" the way stations affiliated with the NBC or the ABC network, for example, were called "affiliates." (I used to work at NBC - AND at an ABC O&O, too, btw.)
I used to work at the AP - for nine years. It's not a corporation. Never has been. Just wasn't set up that way. If any RWs are part of the ownership, it's because they're that way at the station level.
After I left, however, I noticed they'd hired ron fournier to head the Washington DC bureau. He set out to change things, issuing an "all-hands" memo dictating that reporters and writers could and should start putting point of view into their political coverage. When I was still there, everybody tried pretty damn hard to be objective, and NOT to betray any personal points of view or attitudes or political slants. He fucked that up. Not there anymore, but at that point, as far as I'm concerned, they were tainted.
But they don't have a big corporate owner or a 1%er at the top, as the other conventional networks do. Hell, with what little they paid ANYBODY, no one at the AP would EVER qualify as a 1%er.