Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, catches the Associated Press in another whopper. This time, the AP, in reporting on the GAO report that found that some Hurricane Katrina relief money was wasted, tried to frame the issue as a Bush administration scandal by writing:
Some of the firms, including Gulf Stream Coach and Bechtel, have close ties to the Bush administration or have contributed significantly to the GOP.
The fact that two out of twelve companies have some kind of relationship to the Republican Party is hardly a shock; the law of averages would dictate as much. (How many have ties to the Democrats? The AP didn’t research that question.) As Jim shows, though, the AP’s claim that these companies have “close ties to the Bush administration or have contributed significantly to the GOP” is misleading, at best.
I would add a further comment: Bechtel is one of the largest and most respected engineering and construction companies in the world. For the AP to imply that a world-renowned company like Bechtel obtained federal contracts through corrupt ties to the Bush administration–when, in fact, the modest contributions made by the company and its executives are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans–displays an ignorance that really constitutes journalistic malpractice.
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