AP Booing Follow Up
It's been an interesting 16 hours. Within that time, this little ol' blog, which I've only had going for three weeks and would only get about 125 hits per day has gotten somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 visits since Instapundit linked to my coverage yesterday. All in 16 hours.
I can't begin to count or track how many blogs have either directly or indirectly linked to my posting about the AP blunder. But I really can't take credit for this. After all, it was the Freepers that jumped on it first. All I did was put it all in one place, streamlined it a bit and e-mailed to a few folks. Other bloggers and people posting on message boards were no doubt working this story as well, but it appears that a lot of the attention was directed here.
The only other coverage I've seen about this outside of Free Republic and the Blogsphere so far is at Editor and Publisher, where it is currently their top story. Seeing that this happened on the afternoon before the Labor Day weekend began, I'm a little worried that this story may not get the notice it deserves. In my opinion, the Associated Press has committed one of the worst journalistic sins imaginable: they published an outright lie as news and sent it out to their affiliates. As I said yesterday, there is no telling how many papers were being put to bed before the 3-day weekend began and you can bet that the first version of this bogus AP story was the one that was used. To quote Tim, who commented on yesterday's post: "THERE HAS BEEN NO RETRACTION. A retraction is contrite, a disavowal. All we have so far is REDACTION."
UPDATE: The media virus continues at CBS. The question is, how do we stop it from spreading?
I can't begin to count or track how many blogs have either directly or indirectly linked to my posting about the AP blunder. But I really can't take credit for this. After all, it was the Freepers that jumped on it first. All I did was put it all in one place, streamlined it a bit and e-mailed to a few folks. Other bloggers and people posting on message boards were no doubt working this story as well, but it appears that a lot of the attention was directed here.
The only other coverage I've seen about this outside of Free Republic and the Blogsphere so far is at Editor and Publisher, where it is currently their top story. Seeing that this happened on the afternoon before the Labor Day weekend began, I'm a little worried that this story may not get the notice it deserves. In my opinion, the Associated Press has committed one of the worst journalistic sins imaginable: they published an outright lie as news and sent it out to their affiliates. As I said yesterday, there is no telling how many papers were being put to bed before the 3-day weekend began and you can bet that the first version of this bogus AP story was the one that was used. To quote Tim, who commented on yesterday's post: "THERE HAS BEEN NO RETRACTION. A retraction is contrite, a disavowal. All we have so far is REDACTION."
UPDATE: The media virus continues at CBS. The question is, how do we stop it from spreading?
posted by bkm at 6:23 AM
4 Comments:
I came to your blog via Instapundit and I enjoy reading any blog that exposes the dishonesty and bias of the left-wing media. After reading a few posts, "Swimming through the Spin" seems to be well-written and well-done and I've bookmarked it. Keep up the good work! With good people like you the lies of the left will continue to be exposed!
i spent some time this morning emailing the general managers and website people at stations running the story. you can do a google news search on the boo line, then go through the stations one by one (seemed mostly to be tv stations). i limited myself to those in swing states.
I also e-mailed a newspaper or two, and requested that they reply to my request to verify they received it. The Age, an Aussi newspaper did reply.
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Hi Duane, we are checking this now...
Best regards,
Julia Medew
The Sunday Age
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17,000 hits is a bunch. If even half that number e-mail the Boston.com site, the CBS cite and all the others carrying this fake news, with a link to the Editor & Publisher story, we'll probably see some reaction, retraction, or at least redaction!
CBS 2 Chicago has an e-mail contact at http://cbs2chicago.com/feedback/
Here's my e-mail to them. Paste and edit and flood them till they respond.
Your story in your "Water Cooler Talk" section (http://cbs2chicago.com/cooler/watercooler_story_247163112.html) entitled Bush Offers Best Wishes To Clinton, Audience Boos. Contains many factual errors that have since been removed by the AP Wire Service. As noted in Editor And Publisher (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000624935) the story initially reported that " the audience "of thousands booed. Bush did nothing to stop them."
This bit of editorial slander by the journalist has since been redacted. The AP now makes no claim of any booing. You can clearly see that leaving this slanderous bit of "reporting" on your website seriously slants the story unjustly. I am requesting that you research this story and make any corrections you feel are appropriate...and please contact me so I can be assured that you have received my complaint.
This story, and the link to your station, is being widely discussed throughout the "blogsphere" and we will be interested to see who does and does not correct this media bias.
Sincerely,
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