Thanks to the blogosphere, this hasn’t been a good time for the AP, since it’s been caught with its pants down, exposing what can at best be called shoddy reporting, and at worst reprehensibly dishonest reporting. Rather than apologize and fix the problem, AP has gotten arrogant and refused to acknowledge that there is a problem. (Sort of like a junkie in denial.) Turns out that this institutional arrogance is not new and is not unique to Middle Eastern reporting:
THE most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous – used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong – but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they’re at it again in Iraq.
I have got direct experience of this – from challenging the AP’s seriously flawed 1999 “scoop” about the masssacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.
Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians’, as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred – there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.
But the AP’s sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.
The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.
Daily’s account was chilling. It was also – as AP should have known – a fantasy.
Read the rest of Robert Bateman’s NY Post story about dealing with the AP behemoth here.
Hat tip: Lucianne
UPDATE: There’s nothing more flattering than being an inspiration. Riffing off his comment here about the AP’s bone-deep anti-War position, Patrick has written a whole, fascinating blog post looking at the American State Department, and its inability to understand that the bumperstick “War is not the answer,” is, as often as not, more fatuous than helpful.
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Bookworm Room (ARCHIVES) 
Perhaps the AP is so wrapped around the axle on anything having to do with war that it can’t be trusted to report armed conflict anywhere accurately. That kind of bias would only be exacerbated if fringe Democrats like Dennis Kucinich ever get the Cabinet-level “Department of Peace” that many of them have argued for.
Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is
Aren’t Mega corporations evil, Book? You know, unaccountable, too rich, too powerful, too corrupt?
Once again, the fake liberal rhetoric proves to be about power and not humanity.
[…] My understanding is that, if you have an abuse problem, you can’t treat it until you acknowledge it. I’ve already alluded to the fact that the AP resolutely refuses, ever, to acknowledge mistakes in its reporting. Apparently those who rely on its reporting to advance their agenda also refuse to acknowledge that many AP reports are rife with errors and falsehoods. Fortunately, I don’t need to take my somewhat limited time and very limited energy to develop this theme because the Confederate Yankee did a wonderful post neatly summarizing the AP’s many failures, and questioning the echoing silence on the Left in the face of these manifest problems. […]
Were our politics reasonably sane, we would have a ‘bi-partisan’ Congressional commission to investigate the “MESS’ at the AP.
How did America get into this? Whose flawed leadership caused AP to tell big and bigger lies? What crimes against America has the AP committed?
What about our international image because of AP journalistic fabrication and obfuscation? –In other words.. the AP needs to come clean.
The “AP Study Group” can suggest ways for the AP to recoup its journalistic reputation, so sorely tattered.
It needs a re-focus of mission.
Perhaps the AP can decide whether truth is worth reporting.
One of the simple questions we have to ask ourselves is this. If the AP feels that there is no punishment sufficient to prevent them from lieing, and if they feel that there are plenty of rewards in lieing, why exactly do we expect the Arabs to treat America differently than the AP treats America? Our enemies do not fear us and our friends do not trust us. Now, if you were a small state of a few million with a weak military and unstable government, that (being treated as weak) might be excusable. But we’re the United States here. We should have higher standards.
No wonder the terrorists keep attacking us in Iraq. It is not like the rest of the world is scared of poking the superpower in the eyes and getting away with it, why shouldn’t the terrorists castrate and behead with mutilations galore?