Associated Press

Friday

Cockburn

Why won’t the AP tell the truth about J.D. Vance and the couch?

Sofa, so good? What does “fake news” mean in the post-truth era? Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and rebranding of it to X, was supposed to augur a new age of unfiltered information, to combat the censorship of Silicon Valley apparatchiks. For a lot of this week, that meant you’d see Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk sincerely assuring you that Joe Biden was dead or about to die (he addressed the nation, weakly, on Wednesday, an impressive feat for any corpse). How is the discerning reader supposed to separate fact from falsehood in this climate? That’s the question facing tech-savvy Senator J.D.

britain

Sunday

Amber Duke

AP stealth edits its Chinese spy balloon report

The Associated Press (AP) appeared to stealth edit a major report on the Chinese spy balloon, which was the origin of the claim that two such balloons also entered US airspace during the Trump administration. The AP first published the article on Saturday. The balloon was then shot down after floating for several days over the US. Deep into the report, the AP cited one unnamed Biden administration official who claimed that two similar incidents "happened twice during the Trump administration but [were] never made public." [caption id="attachment_45048" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Associated Press's first iteration of the Chinese spy balloon story (Screenshot: Internet Archive)[/caption] However, the AP article looked different on Sunday.

spy balloon

Wednesday

Cockburn

AP conveniently forgets to mention that politician accused of murder is a Democrat

Cockburn is partial to a murder mystery, but in some cases it seems that the mainstream media are going out of their way to hide relevant facts. The Associated Press, for example, serves the important function of scribbling up neutral versions of smaller local stories and syndicating them nation- and worldwide. It's intriguing, therefore, that when the wire service reported on the trial of the Clark County public administrator Robert Telles allegedly killing a Las Vegas investigative journalist, they conveniently forgot to mention that he’s a Democrat. While Cockburn is sure that the AP made an honest mistake, like every yuppie he has found himself on his fair share of crime scenes. Getting a sense of things is generally pretty easy: Colonel Mustard with the dagger in the library.

robert telles nevada ap

Tuesday

Cockburn

What does ‘without evidence’ mean?

President Trump spoke mildly in defense of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse on Tuesday, saying that the 17-year-old seemed to be defending himself when he shot three people, killing two of them. NPR, fresh off of interviewing In Defense of Looting author Vicky Osterweil, had something stern to say about that, tweeting 'President Trump declined to condemn the actions of the suspected 17-year-old shooter of three protesters against police brutality in Kenosha — claiming, without evidence, that it appeared the gunman was acting in self-defense.’ https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1300614359236964358 Without evidence!

without evidence

Thursday

Cockburn

If a video is viral, who cares if it’s fake?

After two months, the 'mostly peaceful' label for the riots gripping American cities is wearing a touch thin. That’s not just because it fails to satisfy conservatives and moderates, who puzzle over how 'mostly peaceful' demonstrations leave so many downtowns torched. It also fails to satisfy the actual rioters. They insist their demonstrations are very violent, courtesy of brutal tactics from the police officers they want abolished.'Proof' of such violence went viral on Wednesday. The video was first shared by Twitter user @Andy_Resist, but was swiftly magnified by a different Andy. This one bore Twitter’s hallowed blue checkmark and enough followers to populate a small city, or a few dozen 'mostly peaceful' protests. https://twitter.

fake news
white people capitalizing
Jarvis Dupont

white people, stop capitalizing on your skin color

The Associated Press recently posted an announcement on their website detailing their decision to capitalize the ‘B’ in Black when used in the context of race and culture.'These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American,' writes AP’s Vice President for Standards, John Daniszewski in a blog post on the AP website.The following day a further announcement was made explaining why they had taken the decision to continue to use a lowercase ‘w’ in ‘white’ when used in the same context.