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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

#31

Post by BuckyBeaver »

ilyt wrote: post #28
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…

> 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 manufacturing. They were not "Russian" in the sense that they were fired by Russian armed forces (to the best of our knowledge). That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use…

Not to mention all of the American munitions raining down all over the world.

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

#32

Post by bombcar »

ajross wrote: post #9
thaumasiotes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news? Because that's not what happened? That's spin. In fact Ukraine jumped on this story only once the AP published it. It's popular to attribute this to Ukrainian propaganda in some circles, but (heh, again getting to the actual subject at hand) that's not something you can report unless you can find evidence. All the facts we know point to the Ukrainian governm…

And it’s not impossible to dream up a world where that kind of mistake would actually get Article 5 moving.

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

#33

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#35

Post by GameOfKnowing »

It's terrifying to know that this is the process for an alert like that going out. I agree with other commenters that this looks like an editorial mistake, but even if not-- a bad-actor journalist (or someone having compromised their Slack account) can get a headline like this on a major wire service in ~10 minutes!? What?!

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

#36

Post by bombcar »

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…

Entire careers can be made by being first on the spot or first to report - this has been the case as long a journalism has been a thing.

And journalists fight over that - it’s going to be hard to countermand as long as we want “news” and not “olds”.

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

#37

Post by xphilter »

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…

My mantra is that it’s always bad management. Insane that none of the managers or editors got fired here. What a mess!

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

#38

Post by ncallaway »

ilyt wrote: post #28
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…

> 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 manufacturing. They were not "Russian" in the sense that they were fired by Russian armed forces (to the best of our knowledge). That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use…

> By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian

Well, no, I made a pretty clear distinction about what context we were using "Russian" to refer to.

By that interpretation both sides of the war in Ukraine use Russian manufactured weapons. Which isn't a crazy thing to suggest, since it's manifestly true.

It seems very likely to me that the journalist meant "Russian-fired rocket". But is that what their source meant? I could easily see a conversation where a source said "Russian missile" referring to the type or manufacture of the missile, and the journalist misunderstood that as "Russian missile" referring to the army who fired it. Clearly, from the context of the slack conversation, this happened quickly without a lot of time to clear up the context.

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

#39

Post by trompetenaccoun »

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…

On the plus side, we now live in a time where more such internals come to light (at least in Western democracies with free press) and news consumers can make their own informed choices which sources they read and trust. I've personally come to view AP more critical over the past years long before the rocket story. Their quality has gotten worse and they've become slightly political which a news agency should never be, their job is to report what happens in a neutral manner. Not that they're the only ones, it seems to be a general trend that media outlets increasingly feel they need to tell people what to think.

Anyway they definitely messed up big time with that rocket story but if the chats are to be believed it seems like an honest mistake. I agree with you that this isn't how things should be done but in practice there's always been pressure to break stories as fast as possible. It's just the way the industry works and I'd at least partly blame this on the readers as well. People should prioritize quality and truth over speed but that's not how it works. Social media needs its news and it needs it now. If you wait hours or even a day until the situation is clear, at that point the discussions have already moved on.

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

#40

Post by [deleted] »

ilyt wrote: post #28
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…

> 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 manufacturing. They were not "Russian" in the sense that they were fired by Russian armed forces (to the best of our knowledge). That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use…

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