An anonymous Accuracy in Media writer complains in a Feb. 2 post:
The GOP is holding a retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, which was home to a Cold War bunker facility. It has since been turned into a large-scale luxury resort, attracting NFL teams and their fans for preseason practices and training camps.
The media wasted little time highlighting the venue as a “luxury resort,” which is true. It could be a self-inflicted wound on part of the GOP, which selected the venue in the first place.
But, on the other hand, the Democrats’ past retreats and media coverage omit the word “luxury.”
In 2017, Politico called the Democrat retreat in Shepherdstown, West Virginia a “retreat,” without any mention of where it would be held in the town. There was no mention of “luxury” or “hotel” in that article.
This year, the House Democrats will host their retreat in Cambridge, Maryland at an undisclosed location. Again, Politico and other media outlets such as CNN did not use the word “luxury” in their coverage of the retreat. The omission of exact location could be due to former Vice President Joe Biden’s visit and speech to his party members. But it seems unfair that the word “luxury” has been omitted from coverage of the Democratic Party and that the location is not mentioned.
First, the anonymous writer gets the Greenbrier’s history wrong. It was a not a Cold War bunker turned into a luxury resort; it’s a luxury resort that had a Cold War bunker — which was designed to house Congress in the event of nuclear war — built into it.
Second, it’s hard to describe the Democratic retreats as being “luxury” if their locations aren’t disclosed. Actually, though, the Shepherdstown retreat was at a place called the Bavarian Inn, While apparently a nice place, it’s arguably not quite as nice as the Greenbrier, according to the New York Times.
So AIM is complaining that something was accurately labeled as “luxury” while something whose location wasn’t given wasn’t labeled as such. That’s a pretty lame item, even by AIM standards.