Salon has an interesting piece in their War Room coverage about why the Downing Street memo hasn’t gotten as much coverage as it should: according to Salon, several newspapers are blaming the Associated Press.
Why? Because AP didn’t run a wire story about the memo. Apparently USA Today waited a month to report, while the Minneapolis Star-Tribune waited a week and then assigned a local reporter to story (good for them!). I’m baffled by why USA Today, which surely had resources to cover the story, waited an entire week??
AP’s excuse? Writing a story was hard work and just not a priority.
The Associated Press, the world’s largest newsgathering organization, essentially didn’t cover the document in its reports until last weekend in a story mostly about John Bolton, Bush’s nominee to become U.N. ambassador. The document then was reported on in an AP story stemming from last week’s news conference involving Blair and Bush.”
“The original story broke on a Sunday, so it was initially difficult to match without access to government officials and documents,” said Nick Tatro, the AP’s deputy international editor. Then, the AP editors who repeatedly considered doing a story, he said, didn’t necessarily see the document as a clearcut case of proving the manipulation of intelligence. Also, the demands of other important stories kept diverting them, he said. “Our people felt it wasn’t a completely clear comment from the raw material,” Tatro said. “It was our intent to do a story, and it just didn’t happen.”
In response to a request for comment, Deborah Seward, AP’s international editor, conceded to Salon in an email, “Yes, there is no question AP dropped the ball in not picking up on the Downing Street memo sooner.”
Ah, nothing like our press, hard at work. However, at least AP admits its mistake.
It would be interesting to know if AP is this pivotal or not. My suspicion is that in this day of limited budgets it probably is. If so, it seems like it sort of behooves us to focus on the AP the way we do on the NYT, the WaPO, the LATimes, etc. Maybe more so.
Is anyone keeping track of big stories and how and by which reporters they are covered at AP? Also, Reuters seems to sometimes do a better job of covering certain issues. Is this because they are more international in scope? Or is it just a management issue?
Finally, next time there is a big story that the MSM is not covering, do we put more of our efforts into pushing AP to cover it or do we figure that once one of the biggies takes it on, AP will follow?
I found it hard to believe, but if what I hear about newsrooms budgets being cut…maybe a lot of papers really ARE dependent upon AP for a lot of their coverage, especially international.
I’ve heard a fair bit of criticism of AP in the last few months, so it might be worthwhile to monitor them a bit. I’ll have to look at Media Matters later and see if they watch AP.
I did a search on Media Matters. There were 16 articles on AP as opposed to 62 on the NYT and 65 on the WaPo. It could be that AP is just doing a better job, but it also could be that we’re not keeping as sharp an eye on them.
This could be a serious mistake, especially if you think of all the newspapers and online outlets (small, local t.v. news rooms?) that may use AP as their primary news source — especially in determining what is and isn’t newsworthy.
Things that make you go hmmmm.