It appears the Associated Press has either been duped by a partisan government union big-wig pretending to be a beleaguered government employee facing furlough due to a government shutdown, or they knew he was an activist and withheld the information from their readers.
The AP released a video titled: “EPA Worker: Furloughs Hit Employees Hard.” The video is described as “Paul Sacker is an engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency who was furloughed because of the government shutdown. Sacker says politicians don’t understand the impact the shutdown has on workers.”
In the video, Mr. Sacker laments the fact that he’s being furloughed. He talks about how it will personally affect him and how he will have to dig into his savings “as the paychecks stop coming.” He decries “the tea party that are using ideological principals to hold the government hostage.” He also says “our president needs to do more leadership,” whatever that means.
Here’s the video:
Now here’s the context the Associated Press didn’t give you.
Paul Sacker is the president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3911. Here he is in an image from the union’s Facebook page:
Mr. Sacker’s been busy. He also gave an interview to the New York NPR station, WNYC, lamenting the horrible conditions he is forced to live under now that the government has been shutdown for about eight hours. To WNYC’s credit, they do make passing mention of his union affiliation in the three minute interview, but not in the written article on their website.
Mr. Sacker is one popular government worker. In June, he wrote an article for the Times Ledger in Queens–this time lamenting the sequester cuts. The narrative is the exact same as we are seeing today regarding the government shutdown.
Needless to say, the AFGE endorsed President Obama for reelection in 2012.
If the Associated Press knew of Mr. Sacker’s union affiliation, certainly they should have mentioned it in their report to provide some context. If they didn’t know, they know now.