I wrote letters to both AP and Reuters concerning their articles published following the AFL CIO debate. I would suggest that others do the same with all the news outlets. Demand equal time. Demand Democracy.
[email protected][email protected]from my letter to AP:
To whom it may concern,
I wrote a letter previously pointing out the many times I have noted the absence of 2008 Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich's name in AP articles where reference to him should clearly be made. Every time an article is written calling attention solely to a single candidate's position it creates the illusion that the particular position originates with that candidate, It also gives the reader the impression that that candidate's position is in opposition to those of the other candidates, giving that candidate a certain sense of ownership of that particular issue. In both cases the public is misled and in effect robbed of it's ability to make an informed decision.
The content of Ms. Lorentzen's article deals with the issue of trade, but sadly this important issue is reduced to a method of attacking the Clinton campaign in her article. Lost here is any real discussion of the two campaign's relative positions on trade. But more importantly this narrow focus on a willfully orchestrated Edwards/Clinton feud succeeds in keeping the press from including any OTHER candidate's positions on trade.
Within the article Edwards criticizes NAFTA, but offers no solutions for dealing specifically with NAFTA / CAFTA. Edwards was quoted many times in the 2004 election cycle stating his opposition to the passage of NAFTA (even saying that he would have voted against it had he been in congress at the time of its passage), stating that he would renegotiate NAFTA rather than cancel/repeal it. The problem here is that any renegotiation of NAFTA would need to involve all of the corporate lawyers who participated in drafting the legislation in the first place, making any such renegotiation nearly impossible. At the end of the article there are four bullet points delineating what Edwards says his plan would do. The first point is the kicker: "Require pro-worker provisions in new deals." What about pro-worker provisions in the OLD deals?
The repeal of NAFTA (and withdrawal from the WTO) has been one of Dennis Kucinich's top three issues throughout the 2004 and the current election campaigns, yet he goes unmentioned in Ms. Lorentzen's article. He has stated repeatedly that trade agreements should be negotiated bilaterally, based on worker's rights, human rights, and environmental quality principles. Please amend the article to include this information or consider writing another article addressing the relative positions of the candidates on trade.
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