Who Is Charles Babington?

Is this what passes for reporting from the Associated Press? Just minutes after Obama's amazing and historic speech that even had Pat Buchanan gushing on MSNBC, an AP hack named Charles Babington wrote this:

Barack Obama, whose campaign theme is "change we can believe in," promised Thursday to "spell out exactly what that change would mean."
But instead of dwelling on specifics, he laced the crowning speech of his long campaign with the type of rhetorical flourishes that Republicans mock and the attacks on John McCain that Democrats cheer. The country saw a candidate confident in his existing campaign formula: tie McCain tightly to President Bush, and remind voters why they are unhappy with the incumbent.
Of course, no candidate can outline every initiative in a 35-minute speech - especially one that also must inspire voters, acknowledge key friends, and toss in some autobiography for the newly-interested. And Obama did touch on nitty-gritty subjects, such as the capital gains tax and biofuel investments.
He said he would "find ways to safely harness nuclear power," a somewhat more receptive phrase than he typically uses for that subject.
But most of his address echoed and amplified the theme that dominated the four-day
Democratic nominating convention here: George Bush.

And it seems that Babington didn't even listen to the speech, opting to critique it (and badly mind you) by reading the advance press release since his 603-word piece was turned in only 26 minutes after the speech was over. Still, the false accusations that it was all-style -no-substance is laughable at best, spine chillingly conspiratorial at worst. Here's Jonathan Singer an MyDD:

What a true journalist would do would be to analyze the speech without using the crutch of opposition talking points, without resorting to the easiest "he said, she said" type of stenography. But apparently this is no longer the policy of the Associated Press under Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier -- a man, by the way, who spent months in talks with the McCain campaign about possibly accepting a senior level position. No, what we get out of Fournier's AP is pure and unadulterated talking points that are as non germane as they are simply incorrect.

And Keith Olbermann's reaction after reading the report:

Mr. Babington got the length of the speech wrong by at least 7 minutes. And this is analysis that will be printed in many, many newspapers, hundreds of them around the country. It is analysis that strikes me as having born no resemblance to the speech you and I just watch. None whatsoever. And for it to be distributed by the lone national news organization in terms of wire copy to newspapers around the country and websites is a remarkable failure of that news organization.Charles Babington. Find. New. Work.

So, not only does Obama have to fight the Republican Party lies and smears over the next two months, it seems he'll have to fight the press-posing right-wing noise machine as well. Game on, brohim.

(H/T Daily Kos & My DD)