*Promoted from the diaries – Aaron*

Did U.S. health care reform allow you to get coverage despite a pre-existing
condition? Email an AP reporter at [email protected]

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 19, 2014

Often times, I am wary of declaring that the media has an outright bias. I get journalism. It’s what I was trained in college to do. Well, that and drink, but those are stories not meant for RedState at all, unless Erick and Aaron have a sudden change of heart as to what content is meant for here.

The above tweet, however, is one of those moments in journalism that I feel as though I’ve made a terrible career choice. I had an extremely liberal journalism professor who praised Obama at every turn after his 2008 win. She was so happy he was elected, our class was assigned to find out why his cabinet were such great choices for their positions. I didn’t turn a thing in because I couldn’t find anything that qualified them. She was not pleased.

“But not all journalists are like her,” I thought. And, indeed, there are definitely some great ones to read and listen to out there. I am a big fan right now of Jake Tapper of CNN, Jamie Dupree of WSB in Atlanta, and others who make it a point to be fair.

However, this AP tweet signifies all that is wrong with the state of modern journalism. It has become overrun with journalists who, with no actual real world experience outside of their career paths, are not afraid of losing credibility in reporting based on what they think is morally right.  There is an outright disdain of what content consumers actually want, and they instead focus on pushing an agenda.

Journalism, I was told, was about reporting the news. It is not about making it into what you want it to be. There is an entire style of writing (called the AP Style) that not only gives you the basics of grammar, but gives you advice on how to write your story, and it is more often than not completely sensible.

But the practice has diverged completely from the theory, and in a very bad way.

It is very simple to do what the AP did in a neutral way. Rather than ask for stories only from those who would be considered a “success story” for the ACA, ask for their experiences with the ACA. Of course, that might produce negative commentary from the people who struggle with this in their every day life, and the AP wants only happy faces who were graced with pre-existing condition coverage by the government.