As readers may know, I make a habit of decrying what has happened to the Associated Press and other wire services. Once upon a time, their dispatches were “Just the facts, ma’am.” Maybe a little boring, but factual and reliable — just what the doctor ordered. These days, the wire services send out dispatches that sound like opinion pieces — all from the left, of course.

In Impromptus yesterday, I published a letter from someone who worked for the AP, years ago. Here is another, which you may find interesting. What it says about the New York Times — and its influence over American journalists in general — is highly important:

Jay,
I read with interest the letter from the former AP reporter about what was and what now is. Let me second those comments.
I, too, was an AP writer back in the same time period [the 1970s, basically]. I left the AP in 1983 to go work in another sector. I look back on my time at the AP with great fondness and nostalgia.
I worked in a couple of western cities, including Salt Lake, and briefly on the foreign desk in New York. During all of my newspaper and wire-service days, opinion was rigorously excluded from our copy. However, I know where the infection began: on the general and foreign desks in New York.
I was in New York for a few months in late 1981. I saw for the first time how the New York Times was held in reverential regard. I remember getting stories filed by AP foreign correspondents, and if there wasn’t a corresponding article in the New York Times, it was treated with some suspicion. The New York Times was the standard, the Bible.
So, if that becomes the standard, is it any wonder?

No.

I’ve said it a thousand times: I work for an opinion journal, and am glad to do so. There are reporters for the wire services, the Times, etc., who want to write opinion pieces, too. Fine. They should make honest men and women of themselves, and work for opinion journals — The Nation, Mother Jones, whatever. Or they should write opinion columns. (I mean, ones specifically so labeled — not opinion columns in the guise of news dispatches.) But reporting?

This is an old, old story, but sometimes we love — or have — to tell the story.