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

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

#131

Post by MichaelCollins »

mc32 wrote: post #74
remarkEon wrote: post #13

>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…

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.

> Who say things like “American missiles fired by Ukraine?”

Russia-aligned internet commenters seem to say things like that a lot. I think it's part of their cope; Russia couldn't be struggling against Ukrainians... no... they're struggling against Ukrainians with American weapons! I guess this is gentler on their egos.

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

#133

Post by MichaelCollins »

Dieselroar88 wrote: post #23

It seems like the actual story here is entirely ignored: 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 thi…

> 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?

Delete the internet, then return to newspapers published once a day. Short of that, it's hopeless. With continuous 24/7 publishing, journalists race to beat each other.

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

#134

Post by elgenie »

remarkEon wrote: post #13

>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…

Even the intelligence community's own PR materials wouldn't put forward such a claim.

Saying something like "can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this" in the first place shows a misunderstanding of what the point of such "intelligence" is: collecting (often-dubious) information as quickly as possible to enable probabilistic (but sometimes wrong) assessments for decision-making.

Nobody with the sort of fundamental lack of judgement shown by Gera belongs anywhere near an editorial chain of command.

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

#135

Post by miguelazo »

sdk16420 wrote: post #127
boomboomsubban wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. And the planes that dropped those bombs could only perform their sorties because they were refueled midair by US pilots.

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

#136

Post by unraveller »

nomdep wrote: post #109
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #34

I'm dumbfounded that something so serious (even mentioning Article 5) was rushed to publishing without at least a second source/more clarification. Really damages credibility of news reporting.

What credibility? They lost it years ago

reputation grows back if you never admit fault

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

#137

Post by maxbond »

Dieselroar88 wrote: post #23

It seems like the actual story here is entirely ignored: 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 thi…

Well, if it were true, it would be important to get the story out as quickly as they could while doing the necessary diligence, right? Timeliness is important in the news, if NATO were going to war with Russia I'd want to know as soon as possible. The problem is that they didn't do any further diligence.

I think this may be a case of attributing malice to incompetence.

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

#139

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

nonethewiser wrote: post #88
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #52

> LaPorta did not exactly claim that Nixon had approved the source in this case, but his words were interpreted by the editors to mean that he did. I think that's a reasonable read. That's what I took away from it initially. He said an official source, which had been vetted, said a thing. The fact that he didn't make it clear that this source had not been vetted for this particular report is negligent at best.

But he was vetted. It's this report that wasnt vetted. If Nixon's judgement was critical for this report then why didnt they confirm with Nixon?

I'm not saying there weren't other failures here, just that LaPorta was vague. On purpose or not, he was vague, and that began the cascading failure event.

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

#140

Post by oefrha »

mc32 wrote: post #74
remarkEon wrote: post #13

>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…

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.

If you pay attention, you’ll realize media often use ambiguous titles that are technically correct, in a sense, but which most of their audience will interpret in a different and wrong way that fits their agenda. It’s really common when it comes to reporting on geopolitical rivals. Usually not this blatant, though.

Btw, there are a lot of reporting on how Russia uses Chinese drones, often without mentioning Ukraine uses the very same (consumer) drones.

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