One Of Fournier's Job Options: McCain

Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007, the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain’s presidential campaign.

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for “a senior advisory role” in communications.

“He did us the courtesy of considering the offer before politely declining it,” Salter said.

He added that Fournier was an attractive target because of his knowledge about the political process, not because of his ideological or partisan leanings. Salter says he still does not know what, if any, those are.

Fournier has taken lumps in the left-leaning blogosphere in recent weeks, following the disclosure of a friendly e-mail exchange with Karl Rove from 2004. This was followed by an analysis of his work by Media Matters, a watchdog group that critiques news coverage from a liberal perspective. The group claimed the influential Washington bureau chief has revealed a pro-McCain bias.

At the time of his dealings with McCain, Fournier was not with the wire service, his home for most of his career. Instead, he was editor-in-chief of a new — now-shuttered — political website Hotsoup.com

Co-founded with such principals as Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, and Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, the bipartisan site was established to discuss and debate hot-button issues with a cast of bold-faced names in politics and pop culture. The hope was that politically savvy readers would gravitate to the site’s social networking functions.

But Hotsoup never took flight, and Fournier returned to the AP as online political editor. (Disclosure: Fournier also spoke with Politico about potential employment before rejoining the AP.)

In a May 2008 shake-up, Fournier was named Washington bureau chief, a post from which he oversees daily campaign coverage and is entrusted to analyze returns and make the final election-night call on the presidential election in November.

When reached by phone Monday, Fournier declined to comment, but referred the matter to AP spokesman Paul Colford, who issued a statement:

“It is not uncommon for journalists to be approached by political campaigns, elected officials and government agencies about possible job opportunities. Ron Fournier was approached by the McCain campaign and decided he wasn't interested in working for a political campaign, months before he rejoined AP in March 2007.”

The revolving door between journalism and partisan politics has turned faster in recent years. Among the most prominent recent converts is veteran journalist Linda Douglass, who joined Barack Obama's campaign in May, fresh from reporting on his campaign for National Journal.

Fournier also met privately with McCain in his Senate office in late 2006, a discussion that Salter maintains was related to that “Internet thing.” An AP spokesman agreed, telling Politico that any “direct conversations” with McCain “were within the context of operating and editing Hotsoup.com.”

Supporting Salter’s recollection, an October 2006 press release announcing a partnership between MSNBC and Hotsoup listed several contributors to the site, including McCain, Obama, President Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mitt Romney.

Even before Fournier was named bureau chief, some liberal critics asserted that the AP reporter seemed too cozy with McCain.

In April, Fournier and AP reporter Liz Sidoti interviewd McCain in front of a packed audience during the news organization’s annual meeting, during which they took heat from liberal bloggers for bringing the senator his favorite kind of Dunkin’ Donuts (with sprinkles).

“There's something about this that undermines the notion of objective and detached journalism,” Steven Benen wrote on Salon the following day.

Taking over the bureau chief position a few weeks later, Fournier quickly pushed changes based around his idea of “accountability journalism,” in which reporters are encouraged to adapt a more blunt, interpretive style as a way of “cutting through the clutter,” as he recently told Politico.

Fournier and his allies in the wire service say reporters are not to make ideological or partisan judgments, but should be allowed to call it like they see it when they see deceptions or hypocrisy among politicians of any stripe.

But liberal critics of the Fournier-influenced style, including writers at Talking Points Memo, allege it has produced coverage that is softer on McCain at the expense of the Democrats.

“The Associated Press' fluffing of John McCain is getting almost cartoonish at this point,” TPM’s Greg Sargent wrote in a July 9 post about how the wire service did not mention the senator’s joke about killing Iranians.

On July 14, TPM founder Josh Marshall wrote that Fournier was the reason “why the premier wire service’s coverage sucks so bad” during the 2008 election.

That same day, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on the investigations into the death of former football-star-turned-soldier Cpl. Pat Tillman and the capture of Private Jessica Lynch.

Deep in the 50-page report was an e-mail between Fournier and Rove, then still at the White House, about the ongoing investigation.

“How does our country continue to produce men and women like this?" Rove asked Fournier.

Fournier responded: "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

In response to the blogosphere uproar over the Rove e-mail, Fournier said he regretted the “breezy nature of the correspondence.”

On Media Matters, Eric Alterman wrote that “Fournier's suck-up comments to Karl Rove were not evidence of a reporter's mere ‘breeziness’ but of a mind-set that is reflected in Fournier's and AP's coverage; one that has the effect of perverting the truth and misleading AP's readers.”

The Rove quote was quickly picked up on numerous left-leaning sites, including The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars.

On July 22, Eric Boehlert wrote a lengthy analysis of Fournier’s work for Media Matters titled, “The AP has a Ron Fournier problem.” After digging through Lexis-Nexis, Boehlert concluded that the bureau chief’s “McCain love runs deep and goes back years.”

Fournier is an unlikely bogeyman in Washington’s ideological wars. Covering presidential campaigns and the Clinton White House for years, he was a consistent news-breaker while maintaining the classic low-profile style of a wire reporter.

In a 2000 profile in the Washington Post, media writer Howard Kurtz described him as among the “most dogged shoe-leather scribes around,” but one who “avoids the spotlight himself.”

Unlike eight years ago, however, Fournier’s pieces in this presidential campaign cycle typically have not been straight news. His hard-hitting “On Deadline” columns — in which he described some candidates as flip-floppers and phonies — quickly made the rounds among the online chattering class throughout the primaries. Powerhouse websites such as the Drudge Report regularly linked to them, with a trickle-down efect bringing Fournier’s ideas down to bloggers.

In previous interviews, Fournier said the pieces were analysis, not opinion. Among fellow Washington reporters and political operatives, Fournier has been regarded widely as a straight-shooter who doesn’t wear his politics on his sleeve.

“I have known Ron for 12 years and I don’t have the slightest idea what his politics are,” said Lockhart, who dealt with Fournier while working in the Clinton White House and, later, in launching Hotsoup.

“I have never come across someone who plays it down the middle as much as Ron does,” Lockhart added.

And when asked about why the McCain campaign was interested in bringing Fournier aboard, Salter said that he was a “very smart guy” whose 2006 book, “Applebee’s America” — co-written with Dowd and Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik — showed an understanding of modern political campaigns.

“Could never tell his politics,” Salter added.