Associated Press reporter Ryan Foley—the man who calls himself “scoops”—has hit a new low.
Following the tragic accident at Adventureland on July 3, where one boy died, and another was critically injured on the amusement park’s Raging River ride, Foley wrote a story about how the park’s owner has given a lot of money to Republicans.
Why is that relevant, you might be asking? It’s not. But that’s literally the story: “Something awful happened at an amusement park, and the park owners are Republican donors.” I’m not kidding. There’s no connection between the two.
But it gets even worse.
The closest Foley comes to making any connection is to say that this last legislative session, the Iowa legislature “approved a bill sought by Adventureland eliminating longstanding safety rules setting a minimum age of 18 to operate rides,” and that two of the sponsors of that bill and Governor Reynolds are Republicans who received donations from Adventureland’s CEO.
The ride operator was over 18, so, again, no relevance to this horrible tragedy. But what Foley doesn’t say—and clearly purposefully ignores—is that Democrat candidate for governor Rep. Ras Smith was also a sponsor of the bill.
How does Foley leave that out? If everything is relevant when it comes to a tragedy (which seems to be his sick philosophy), how is it that Smith’s name isn’t mentioned once in the article?
Foley quotes “Democratic Sen. Nate Boulton” as saying it was a bad idea to move the age minimum from 18 to 16. But he says nothing of Smith’s sponsorship of the bill. The message, which is impossible to miss, is that Democrats are good and Republicans bad. This is horrible, even for a reporter who is so outwardly partisan as Foley.
The press expresses constant shock at how the public doesn’t trust them. And they tell us how personally hurt they are when politicians call them Fake News.
But the truth hurts. You want to regain credibility? You want the public to trust you? Then don’t give people like Foley an AP platform. There are plenty of outlets for a blatantly partisan reporter. Iowa Starting Line has recently run into some extra funding.
The fact that the AP keeps Foley on is a disgrace. The editors should be embarrassed. Sadly, we know that Foley is not.
