Patterico's Pontifications

3/20/2005

The AP‘s Brilliant Strategy for Avoiding Criticism from Blogs

Filed under: Media Bias — Patterico @ 8:30 am



Several days ago, I read the story about the AP‘s decision to provide two different versions of major stories. One will be “the traditional ‘straight lead’ that leads with the main facts of what took place.” The other will be an optional approach that “attempts to draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means.”

The examples given:

Traditional

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners Thursday, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The attack, which killed 47 and wounded more than 100, came as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad said they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government.

Optional

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) Yet again, almost as if scripted, a day of hope for a new, democratic Iraq turned into a day of tears as a bloody insurgent attack undercut a political step forward.

On Thursday, just as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners in the northern city of Mosul.

Here’s the part I missed the first time I read the story:

The AP stressed that the optional leads will not be available to the news service’s Internet providers. They are designed strictly for print.

Is this just a way for the AP to get out its bias in print, without being criticized by Web pundits?

25 Responses to “The AP‘s Brilliant Strategy for Avoiding Criticism from Blogs”

  1. […] es that he’s with the Associated Press has been busy insulting me in the comments to this post. The exchange begins Patterico's Pontifications » Arrogant? Check! Insulting? Check! Gutless? Check! I Guess He Could Be From the Mainstream Media . . . (0c6a63)


  2. […] ciated Press has been busy insulting me in the comments to this post. The exchange begins here. This guy is a piece o […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Arrogant? Check! Insulting? Check! Gutless? Check! I Guess He Could Be From the Mainstream Media . . . (0c6a63)

  3. […] piced up) version to online media. When I earlier mentioned this new policy on my blog, I speculated that the AP might be doing an end […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » An Alternative Explanation for the AP’s Alternate Ledes (0c6a63)

  4. Or is it a realization by AP that the Internet is a far more exacting medium than print? The difference being you choose your online news sources, the other is often a monopoly.

    It will be interesting to see which version gets used by print media — the story choices may be fairly stark.

    Kevin Murphy (6a7945)

  5. The AP has a history of trying to avoid negative comments from blogs. Take a look at the terms and conditions for its RSS feeds. I’d blogged about these when you first mentioned them, but my trackbacks were broken at the time.

    blogan (b5341e)

  6. See this related thread.

    Great OP-ED piece at Roger L. Simon’s this morning. See comment and thread:

    Link Here

    Ron Wright (040ca8)

  7. CLEVER BUT DISHONEST . . . AND ULTIMATELY FRUITLESS
    Patterico reports that the Associated Press appears to have hatched a scheme to avoid having its stories slammed by the Blogosphere. In short, the plan appears to involve having biased pieces out solely in print form, while having Internet versions…

    Pejmanesque (2ae9b5)

  8. Same Food, Different Flavor
    The AP will offer two versions of its news stories. Patterico thinks he knows why….

    Slant Point (e9b402)

  9. That stuff on Schiavo is HUGE.

    Someone, please, get that nurse in front a camera!!

    Thanks for sharing.

    TallDave (e15e0b)

  10. I’m not sure, Brent, but I think that you might be reading more into the AP’s T&C that is really there. If you wanted to provide the actual RSS feed itself as part of a Web page titled “The AP Sucks” or something like that, they would object. But subscribing to the feed yourself, finding an article, then writing a blog post critical of that article that includes a hyperlink to the article itself probably wouldn’t be something the AP could object to, I don’t think.

    And frankly, if they did, the most they could make you do is get rid of the hyperlink. Copyright law doesn’t give the AP the power to prevent others from quoting them in the context of criticism. In fact, Title 17 specifically reserves that privilege.

    Jeff Harrell (a5b150)

  11. I hate to get caught defending the AP, but it’s possible that the real purpose of this is to differentate their product so that they can charge more to print services.

    They probably intend the plain version to be unsuitable for consumer news, needing considerable rewrite work from whoever wants to use it, while the fancy version is ready to go as-is. Just drop it on the page and slap your own by-line on it.

    Doc Rampage (b42666)

  12. Well, it won’t work anyway. Do they think no bloggers subscribe to print editions?

    Patterico (756436)

  13. It seems to me they have reported two stories as one. What’s the point, to save space? The “body parts” and “tears” overcome the positive story, in my opinion, and by design.

    J. Peden (ffccb8)

  14. AP: Stop Bothering Us
    The AP has a solution for preventing blog criticism: put the bias in print and not the web. The AP decided to provide two different versions of major stories. One will be “the traditional ‘straight lead’ that leads with the…

    The Politicker (b617a9)

  15. Wow.
    “Is this just a way for the AP to get out its bias in print, without being criticized by Web pundits?”
    That’s hilarious.
    This move was made to mollify print editors who are tired of seeing the online editions of their own paper “scoop” the print edition.
    It’s simply a way of giving the deadwood edition of the paper a different set of words.
    Blogging, bloggers, the blogosphere have absolutely nothing to do with it, and the very idea that you’d entertain such a notion shows how little insight you have into the news business and how limited your navel-gazing must be.
    Makes we wonder whether your other critiques are equally ridiculous and self-centered.

    Reader (6be785)

  16. I am glad you feel my navel-gazing is limited.

    Anonymous comments can be useful when supported by evidence. By contrast, bald assertions made anonymously, such as you have made here, are worthless.

    Patterico (756436)

  17. I understand how you think “bald assertions” that aren’t anonymous (yours) are worthwhile, while mine are not. If you want evidence, why don’t you ask AP why they did it? Why don’t you ask print editors what they think about it? If you want to do media criticism, at least do your homework.
    I don’t expect you to believe everything that I say, because I am anonymous, but I sat through a meeting between top AP editors and top print editors from around the country when this was being discussed, before it was implemented. And there was only one reason to do this… to give print editors something fresh that hadn’t already been online. Forty percent of all AP revenue comes from its U.S. newspaper members. AP is keeping its base somewhat happy with this minor move.
    You want proof that your assertion is silly?
    Consider the fact that all newspaper stories, including AP stories (and, yes, even the ones designed strictly for print), end up on newspaper web sites AFTER they’re published in print. If you knew anything about how the print-to-web process at newspapers is automated, you’d know this to be the case. So if you want to find the story and link to it, just wait until it’s already appeared in print, and it will be on the newspaper’s web site.
    If you had the ethics, reliability and credibility of the dreaded “mainstream media,” you’d be working on a correction about now…
    The mainstream media deserves much of the criticism you dish out, so why diminish your credibility in the eyes of knowledgeable readers by allowing such uninformed assertions to remain on your site without any evidence to support it, and, in fact, with much evidence to the contrary?
    Why don’t you hold yourself up to the same standard that you attempt to hold the media? Why the double standard?

    Reader (0cf449)

  18. “Reader,”

    Sorry. Nobody is going to take your assertions seriously until you identify yourself. My name is Patrick Frey. What’s yours?

    You do show indicia of being a mainstream media type, I’ll grant you that. Evidence includes:

    1) Clear chip on shoulder about blogs, coupled with an arrogant attitude.

    2) False accusations and inability to read text.

    You accuse me of making an “assertion” that merits a correction and wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny if I were in the media.

    What “assertion” did I make? I have not reported that this was why the AP made this change. I simply noted the change and offered commentary that gave a plausible motive.

    Any decent editor would permit such commentary.

    I’ll admit that there is one difference between my blog and a newspaper. A newspaper would never allow a reader to anonymously express an opinion, as I have allowed you to do here.

    If you can’t back up what you say, pardon us if we find it of no value.

    Patterico (756436)

  19. Assertion 1: The AP’s Brilliant Strategy for Avoiding Criticism from Blogs.
    Asserstion 2: Is this just a way for the AP to get out its bias in print, without being criticized by Web pundits?

    Sorry, but framing an assertion in the form of a question is simply an attempt to avoid responsibility for making an assertion. And are you trying to say that headline isn’t masquerading as a statement of fact?

    And you’re flat wrong about editors allowing such “commentary” because what you’re saying is not even plausible. The sad thing is you don’t even seem to realize how implausible it is.

    Anything can seem plausible to someone who is either ignorant or really wants to believe it, or both. How about this: Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. My father-in-law states it as fact. Seems plausible to me. Why don’t you write about that?

    I’m a huge fan of blogs and blogging and think that mainstream media types who ignore social networking do so at their own peril. My “arrogance” has nothing to do with disdain for bloggers. It’s anger directed at you, personally, for being careless in throwing around a wild, unsubstantiated rumor, and being wrong and not willing to admit it. You refuse to follow the same ethical guidelines that journalists follow. You clearly are untrustworthy and that’s why I choose to remain anonymous.
    By the way, mainstream media get anonymous phone calls every day, and when those callers point out problems in the coverage, it is investigated and resolved by correction if necessary. The source of the correction doesn’t matter. It’s the need to make a correction that matters.
    Read Jeff Jarvis. He admits it when he screws up.
    You could learn a lesson from him and from mainstream media. Admitting when you’re wrong actually improves your credibility.

    No longer a reader (6be785)

  20. Reader–Patterico’s question of bias is legitimately raised by the difference in tone of the two versions of the same story. When AP chose this example to illustrate their new service, they picked a politically charged piece with a key difference in tone. The electronic version is pretty much straight news. The optional print version might as well just scream QUAGMIRE in 72-pt. font.

    I’m curious whether the political slant to all this ‘imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means’ will remain apparent across other stories. Was this selection typical of what we can expect in AP print versions? If so, why was the quagmire-talk introduced? Patterico’s question is genuinely raised by this example. There is now one example to support his conclusion and zero to the contrary.

    See-Dubya (85b967)

  21. It’s anger directed at you, personally, for being careless in throwing around a wild, unsubstantiated rumor, and being wrong and not willing to admit it. You refuse to follow the same ethical guidelines that journalists follow. You clearly are untrustworthy and that’s why I choose to remain anonymous.

    That’s a load of crap. I never said it was a rumor. It’s my own personal speculation as to an organization’s possible *motivation* in taking a certain action. (There was a tongue-in-cheek element to my speculation, which you have entirely missed, but never mind that — let’s pretend I was 100% serious.)

    I have no doubt that if I were to contact the AP, they would tell me they had all sorts of legitimate reasons for this change, having nothing to do with blogs. But I thought it was interesting that the strategy would also give their more colorful stories the chance to fly under blogs’ radar screen. And I noted that.

    It’s a speculation about motivation, and that happens in commentary pieces every day. Every day. It’s 100% different from your silly Hillary Clinton example.

    And if you put a headline like that on a clear piece of commentary, then no, it’s not a headline masquerading as a statement of fact — as 99.9% percent of readers understand. It’s simply a summary of my argument.

    You have a hell of a nerve accusing someone of being untrustworthy because they won’t accept at face value your anonymous assertions — especially coming as they do, coupled with a barrage of insults.

    Don’t throw Jeff Jarvis at me. Jeff Jarvis has zero respect for people who take anonymous potshots at people, and has said so dozens of times. If Jeff Jarvis read this exchange, he might disagree with (and chuckle at) the theory of my post — but he would conclude you’re a putz based on your behavior here. If you disagree, feel free to e-mail him the link and have him weigh in.

    “No longer a reader”? Good riddance. Feel free to return some time when you have the guts to put your name behind the insulting things you say.

    The vaunted Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen.

    Patterico (756436)

  22. I’m going to link to this exchange from a stand-alone post.

    Patterico (756436)

  23. Anything can seem plausible to someone who is either ignorant or really wants to believe it, or both. How about this: Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. My father-in-law states it as fact. Seems plausible to me. Why don’t you write about that?

    Why would anyone blog about this before ’08?

    Justene (c514e1)

  24. Media critics: AP’s dual lede service
    My boss pointed out to me a recent post by Patterico, in which he discusses AP’s recent announcement that it will offer two ledes on certain stories. One of them will be available to anyone who subscribes to AP’s service, the other will only be avail…

    The Dead Parrot Society (b09ceb)

  25. This is a great idea, and think we should be supporting the AP’s openness.

    I PREFER the “traditional ’straight lead’” version. They gives the facts without bias or emotion, which is WHAT A JOURNALIST IS SUPPOSED TO DO. Lay out the facts, and lay out any opinion clearly and separately. The “optional approach” cannot help but have bias and opinion interweaved into the factual narrative.

    Having both versions available will certainly allow us to learn how emotion, bias and viewpoint can be subtly inserted into reporting.

    tomjedrz (562284)


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