Associated Press now Retweeting Activists’ Hashtags

-By Warner Todd Huston

With its recent Tweet about Texas Democrat Wendy Davis, the Associated Press seems to have given up all pretense of the journalist’s “nonpartisan” creed by tweeting the hashtag of left-wing activists along with the news.

Democrat State Senator Davis made a name for herself at the end of June by holding a new Texas abortion bill hostage by launching a filibuster that thrilled the hearts of pro-abortion activists in Texas and across the country. Her supporters began to use the Twitter hashtag #StandWithWendy to support her on that social media outlet.

A hashtag is a short code meant to help Twitter users search for Tweets with a specific message. It can be used for humor, advertising or political activism. Activists of all sorts use hashtags to spur like-minded Twitterers to action. But it is an activist’s tool, to be sure.

Yet now the AP is using that activist’s tool appearing to throw its support behind the left-wingers supporting Davis.

Here is how the AP Tweeted about its latest story out of Texas:

The question remains, should a supposedly nonpartisan news outlet use activist’s hashtags in their own Tweets about their news content?

The tweet was since deleted. Apparently the AP realized using activist’s memes was a bit less than journalistic.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

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