Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

semafor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 181 posts

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#121

Post by Mikeb85 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #120
Mikeb85 wrote: post #110

Was the story false? Because Polish government sources also strongly suggested it was Russian until a meeting with Biden, where they backpedelled hard... As of right now, the Polish investigation is ongoing and it's never actually been confirmed that it's a Ukrainian missile. But the story's been buried. So was the AP source not vetted and did the journalist screw up or did officials change the narrative for politica…

Ukraine shot down a Russian airliner in 2001 during joint exercises because of a crappy S-200. It happens.

Which has nothing to do with this incident.

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#122

Post by IncRnd »

devindotcom wrote: post #115
IncRnd wrote: post #22

The people in that Slack thread, except for the reporter James LaPorta, exhibited an incredible amount of willful ignorance that bordered on stupidity. The original statement was vague and did not name a source. It held the pretense of a source by saying an unnamed senior American intelligence official was in some capacity vetted by Ron Nixon. It's not clear whether the person was vetted as an official, if his words…

I feel your clear and general disdain for the press is coloring your interpretation of events here and the reality of editing and sourcing. There was an editorial failure, certainly, but in a rapidly changing situation due to a misunderstanding of the evidence given by a vetted source (such sources are seldom named even internally). Don't forget five or six nations were "squabbling" over the origin and nature of thes…

  It was not a third hand story (US intel official claimed direct knowledge),
  reporters are not second hand (they interpret, contextualize, and synthesize)
  and editors are not third party (they are an integral part of the news
  process).
It literally, according to the definition of third-hand, was a third-hand story. This isn't up for debate, as the term can be found in any dictionary.

Your parenthetical on the direct knowledge is wrong. Direct knowledge was not stated anywhere. That is your spin or second-hand version of what was written in the slack thread, which was at least second hand derivative of the missile strikes.

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#123

Post by morpheuskafka »

mardifoufs wrote: post #11

Qoah so they really threw him under the bus. Crazy that the editorial staff didn't even pause when article 5 was brought up. It seems like something you might want to really be sure about, and ask more questions on who did it (not just making sure that missiles actually landed somewhere). Extremely careless

Surely the actual militaries (at least Poland and the US who would presumably be the primary decision makers) would have actual knowledge of what happened/what their confidence in that was. I believe they fairly quickly clarified that the missiles were not suspected to have come from Russia.

At any rate, if they were wrong too seeing the AP publish it citing their own intelligence as a source wouldn't have made them any more confident in their analysis.

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#124

Post by [deleted] »

IncRnd wrote: post #22

The people in that Slack thread, except for the reporter James LaPorta, exhibited an incredible amount of willful ignorance that bordered on stupidity. The original statement was vague and did not name a source. It held the pretense of a source by saying an unnamed senior American intelligence official was in some capacity vetted by Ron Nixon. It's not clear whether the person was vetted as an official, if his words…

[deleted]

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#125

Post by miguelazo »

MattDemers wrote: post #82
IncRnd wrote: post #22

The people in that Slack thread, except for the reporter James LaPorta, exhibited an incredible amount of willful ignorance that bordered on stupidity. The original statement was vague and did not name a source. It held the pretense of a source by saying an unnamed senior American intelligence official was in some capacity vetted by Ron Nixon. It's not clear whether the person was vetted as an official, if his words…

> Either that or pay for them to attend remedial journalism school. You're assuming that journalism school is teaching things that are preventing this from happening.

Excellent point. This is standard practice for Pentagon stenographers. Someone just got caught too far out on a limb on this occasion.

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#126

Post by pauljurczak »

mc32 wrote: post #79
ncallaway wrote: post #3

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…

Do people often say when reporting on wars: Chinese AK-47s killed 20 civilians in Afghanistan, or do they say 10 Isis fighters fired AK-47s killing twenty civilians in Kabul? Oh, Twenty American guided missiles killed Houthi fighters —but but they were fired by Saudi Arabian forces from Saudi Arabia. Or French Exocet missiles killed blah blah blah in blah blah blah (without further context?) You want to know who in h…

Or an American Stinger missile shoots down an American Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-ta...

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#127

Post by sdk16420 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #119
mc32 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who say things like “American missiles fired by Ukraine?” It would only make sense to say that if US troops on the ground hosted by Ukraine fired the missiles. It’s stupid. No one says Chinese AK-47s fired by Ukrainian soldiers. Someone was playing stupid.

Headlines like "US bombs dropped on bus full of children" are somewhat common in stories about the war in Yemen.

But those were sold with the expectation to be used by Saudi Arabia for that purpose.

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#129

Post by Animats »

mandevil wrote: post #86
pessimizer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anybody knowledgeable tell me why Ukraine would have old-ass Soviet missiles left? I would naïvely assume that old munitions would be long gone (aren't we like 8 months in?) and replaced with shiny US stuff.

While there are simple US weapons that have been provided (things like TOW missiles, M777 howitzers, etc.) and a small handful of complex ones (the famous HIMARS) many of the weapons provided have actually been of Soviet manufacture- since the Ukrainians already know how to take care of and use them, it is easier to give them Polish MiG-29's that the Ukrainian Air Force already can operate than to spend months traini…

The ammo makers have already increased production. There are many sources for 155mm shells. Nammo [1] BAE Systems.[2] Dezamet [3] General Dynamics [4]. Those are somewhat generic. The real shortages are in the fancier guided stuff. Most of which is decades-old technology and could be built today from common smartphone parts.

[1] https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-...

[2] https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/shell-155mm-how-he-l15

[3] https://dezamet.com.pl/155mm,26,en.html

[4] https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/artillery/

Re: AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process

#130

Post by miguelazo »

ncallaway wrote: post #3

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…

This is an absurd interpretation.
Post reply on HN