In the old days, I’d bet on AP to get it right and pretty much ignore some web site I never heard of. Nowadays… well, I don’t know who to believe. But I’m prepared to accept the idea that the AP’s reporter didn’t know what they did last year.
AP reports,
Thousands of children, including some brought by gay and lesbian parents, braved chilly rain at the South Lawn of the White House Monday to roll colored eggs across soggy grass as part of an event dating to the 19th century.
About 16,000 tickets were distributed for the day-long event, and about a hundred gay and lesbian parents lined up for the passes handed out on a first-come-first-served basis.
But PageOneQ (which I’ve never heard of before), says it wasn’t first-come first-serve at all, at least not like in previous years,
After waiting outside overnight to be among the first to enter this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, families in line were surprised to learn that the White House had changed the ticketing policy for the annual event, PageOneQ has learned.
The unannounced change means that the families who waited in line the longest, in one case for twenty-four hours, will not be among the visitors at the event’s opening ceremonies. The first families in line, who were not part of the LGBT family group, received tickets with an 11:00am entrance time, two hours later than the opening time listed in the White House press release.
If PageOneQ is right, the goal, I imagine, was to keep Laura Bush from being pictured with gay couples. Indeed, AP reports,
The Bushes posed for pictures with families at the event, which was closed off to the public in the early morning hours. Attending at the event’s start were White House staff, youth volunteer groups, kids from the Gulf Coast region and other invited guests.
AP? Knight Ridder, maybe. AP, no.
When I was stationed in Turkey in the 1970’s (when we weren’t really there) I used to listen to a variety of radio stations, short wave and local broadcast, and read a number of newspapers.
I usually found the US put out about as much propaganda as pravda when it came to politics and foreign events. I’m sure the US reporters justified it to themselves by saying we were in the cold war.
You can get good information on blogs and since they don’t need to report quarterly revenue or influence FCC rulings on ownership it can be better, it’s just knowing which blogs. This one being one of the best of course.