Priorities: AP Treats 20 People Spending Night at Zuccotti Park as National News

The 8:52 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. national headlines page at the Associated Press's main site this morning teased a story about how twenty -- wow, a whole twenty -- Occupy Wall Street protesters spent the night at Zuccotti Park after barricades which had been up for almost two months were removed. Not only that, but the related brief story (saved here as a graphic for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), has an accompanying series of four photos (most stories usually have just one).

Here's the story as of 8:57 a.m.:

There were more than 20 people in thousands of McDonald's locations this morning, and that's not news (as it shouldn't be). So why is this a national item?

Note how the story's writers describe last November's police action as a "raid." It could easily have been written to say that "Police evicted protesters on November 15." But that would have been fair and balanced. Can't have that.

This saturation coverage of OWS couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the AP's labor union, the News Media Guild, has been open and vocal about its support for the Occupy movement since the beginning, could it? No, I'm sure that the process used to determine this story's importance was completely objective and had no underlying agenda (/sarc).

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.