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Ron Nixon could click a button on a launch document saying "I vetted the source per the rules", and not rely on someone saying something vague about the fact that he had vetted the source for past uses.
Named officials, such as Presidents and Secretaries of State, get us into wars through misapplication of evidence and in some cases creation of evidence. These doomsday reporters and editors are nothing more than squabbling hacks, using third hand stories from second hand reporters that are then published by third party editors.
I was in shock when I read, "I can't imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this." This thread contained people who should all have been fired, except for the person who was fired. Either that or pay for them to attend remedial journalism school.
The road to hell is paved with good itentions, but your guides on that road are AP editors.
Why are a bunch of journalists concerned with how fast they can send out a push notification?? is the world that creates that incentive healthy? What can we do to remove the incentive that led to people having this kind of a discussion on a slack channel while one dude is at a doctors appointment?
This seems like an utter failure of the editorial process in this case. Also the English language (and parentheticals) are hard!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> . He needed another source or more context To publish, maybe. He was at a doctors appointment, got a tip, and passed it to his boss. He didn't write the news alert. If they wanted more context, the other people on the chat should have found some.
That's not how I read the linked story? That particular Slack message happened to coincide with his doctor's appointment, but the article that printed had his byline on it. Surely he wrote it, or at the very least dictated it to an editor who put it in the system. No one publishes stories on the wire based on a two-message slack thread sent from the doctor's office!
Their retraction note is very brief, and simply states the information was wrong.
Edit: pasting the entire message
> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In earlier versions of a story published November 15, 2022, The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zelenskyy-kher...
Frankly, this seems like an editorial mistake not a journalists mistake. Unless he completely made up the information he received, or lied about the attribution in the internal slack chat, he should not have been fired for this. This was an editorial error. In fact, the exact information he passed along was factually correct by one interpretation. The S-300 rockets were "Russian" in the sense that they were Russian m…
I think if the reporter knew the missiles were fired by Ukrainian forces but manufactured by Russia, then he's ultimately responsible for communicating that in a clear way that isn't going to be misconstrued to mean something it doesn't.
In this case though I think it's more likely that his source told him something that wasn't true, and there was a misunderstanding about just how well-vetted the source was. Whether the reporter is responsible for that is less clear -- in that case it seems like calling it an editorial mistake rather than the reporter's mistake seems reasonable to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems likely, but you still don't let the reporter off the hook. "Technically correct by one interpretation" isn't the standard for journalistic sourcing. He needed another source or more context (just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story) and didn't get one. It was a messup on a few different axes, but it's started with bad journalism. Whether or not the guy was fir…
> just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story I understand why "Russia fires on Poland" is news. Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?
The same reason that a lot of people assumed that "Russia fires a single missile at Poland" was not an obvious, tragic accident from the get-go. Motivated thinking.
>I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this Has this AP reporter been asleep for … their entire career? Charitably, I can interpret this as the reporter thinking they wouldn’t make up something about a potential Article 5 event, but - and maybe it’s my cynicism about this war - wouldn’t that mean you’d want to guarantee that what you’re saying is super precise? “Russian missiles hit Poland” vs…
Speaking of US officials, or from any country at all, they don't really care about evidence. It's political games that news media feeds with like vultures, sometimes.
>It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
>President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...
Frankly, this seems like an editorial mistake not a journalists mistake. Unless he completely made up the information he received, or lied about the attribution in the internal slack chat, he should not have been fired for this. This was an editorial error. In fact, the exact information he passed along was factually correct by one interpretation. The S-300 rockets were "Russian" in the sense that they were Russian m…
That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use some of russian equipment...
Actually no, it's not terrible, it's outright malicious