Posted on 09/13/2004 6:15:56 AM PDT by ConservativeMajority
WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- An Associated Press reporter who filed a story that former President Clinton was 'booed' at a Wisconsin rally when President George W. Bush announced that his predecessor had been hospitalized for heart surgery is standing by his claim. Scott Lindlaw, a White House correspondent who was among the reporters traveling with President Bush during the campaign swing to several battleground states, provided the information for the story that appeared under the byline of Tom Hays.
No other news agency reported any booing and none is audible on network television clips, but the AP sent out the article with the statement, "Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them."
Shortly after the article appeared on the wire, Karen Hughes, an advisor to President Bush, demanded it be corrected. The AP deleted the two sentences from the story and released it with no byline.
Tom Curley, AP president and CEO, was asked by Talon News to explain the circumstances surrounding the correction.
Curley said, "The reporter and a couple others standing with him thought they heard booing. After checking of tapes, they decided it was oohs, not boos."
Curley also confirmed that Hays was not present at the Wisconsin rally, but was in New York at the time of the event. The reference to "booing" came from material provided by Lindlaw. Talon News confronted Lindlaw on Friday about the discrepancy in his reporting of the event.
When asked if he heard booing as he reported, he replied, "I did."
Lindlaw declined to be interviewed but insisted that his reporting was accurate.
Lindlaw said, "What I had to say I put in the wire."
Lindlaw refused to answer any other questions about the report. Lindlaw provided no explanation for making a charge that would create a negative impression of President Bush and his supporters.
Some have criticized Lindlaw's previous work for having an anti-Bush slant. In July, he wrote an article that used detailed quotes from a meeting of Washington, DC conservatives that was "off the record." The original source of the quotes was not Lindlaw, since he was not present at the meeting.
His story, titled "Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush," suggested that because one of the 150 participants in the meeting had expressed misgivings about the Iraq war, conservatives are perhaps turning away from the president. Lindlaw quotes two men from Missouri to support his thesis, one of whom is undecided about which candidate he may vote for.
Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved.
How did AP explain Hays' name being used as the reporter that filed the original story?
Well, Hays wrote the article, which was about Clinton going into the hospital. Inserted in the story was the booing business. There was also a blip about Kerry addressing his rally.
At the end it listed four additional reporters who contributed to the story but left out Lindlaw. They should have included him, obviously.
But it is not unusual for a reporter to have a story with a byline and have other reporters contribute to it. It was obvious to me from the start that the boo lie did not emanate from Hays.
Another case of who do you trust: A couple hundred eyewitnesses or a liberal on a mission?
The subject of the original Hays bylined story was not the Bush rally, it was Clinton's hospitalization, and yes, it is normal for a reporter to byline a story and then at the end to note other reporters who contributed.
The original story had Hays' byline and noted at the end four reporters who contributed, but they did not include Lindlaw.
So the error wasn't Hays' byline, it was omitting Lindlaw from the list of "contributors" at the end.
The subsequent stories that went out over the wire that focused on the booing alone had one story bylined by Deb Reichman and I'm not sure if any got sent with Lindlaw's byline. I know it appeared without attribution on most sites and publications.
Thanks. Now, I am less confused. Why would I expect complete transparency from the AP?
I'm still waiting for an answer from the AP on the vetting of another source they used in a story.
>>>...they decided it was oohs, not boos.<<<
ROFLOL! Hilarious! Oohs, not boos!! Too funny! This struck me totally silly!!
Thanks for posting this -- strangely enough, I'd only first heard of the booing (or should I say oohing! LOL!) incident in Pukin' Dog's Absolutely Excellent A+ FRant (Open Letter to MSM) the other day.
These people are truly pitiful.
<><
I sent the following email. No need to be rude, eh?
Sir:
I respectfully submit to you that AP needs to report on John Kerry's insistence that George Bush clear up his National Guard service while refusing to, himself, sign form 180. This is a key issue since Mr. Kerry has made it so by his direct challenge to the President's service.
This will help to offset a current perception that the totality of AP's reporting has been biased. For example, the "Boo" story has served to incredibily undermine the credibility the reports being submitted by your campaign cadre.
Thank you for your consideration of my suggestion.
I'm still fuming over their "the U.S. bombed a 'wedding party'" story they put out from Iraq. Long after our guys provided more than ample documentation and evidence to refute it, they persisted in reporting it that way.
Glad that's now known far and wide.
Too bad Lindlaw isn't following the Kerry Kamp. He wouldn't need earplugs for the non-existant "crowd noise".
LOL
Then I sent another email from another one of my email accounts that read as follows along with a copy of the Talon News story:
Sirs:
Following is news report about your organization's reporting. I do not believe that this is going to go away or be forgotten. Personally, I have asked my local paper to better scrutinize the AP reports that it publishes since there seems to be an agenda being inserted into the stories submitted by your political reporters.
So Dan Rather is moonlighting with the AP.
>
> The problem is that people don't want to put in the
> kind of time it takes to homeschool their children.
>
No kidding about the time. As I'm finding out. My wife stayed at home for 10 years so I figured I'd take a turn at it -- boy did I have it easy when I went to an office and sat at a computer or in meetings all day. Homeschooling three boys and dealing with all the activities and taking care of the home... boy did I ever step into it deep.
Perhaps Lindlaw was busy typing out the ANG memo on his laptap
and was not listening closely as the President expressed his hopes for X42's recovery . . .
Yeah Right! About as accurate as Rather.
He can always defend himself by saying he heard a few scattered boos that weren't picke up by the audio tape.
HOWEVER, if there weren't enough boos to be picked up on tape, how can he write that the President did nothing to stop them. After all, you can't stop what you don't hear.
Bogus story by lying dRat.
Tom Hays had his name on the original "the crowd booed" story. And Hays did nothing to deny that he was the source of the quote when he was asked by hundreds of people, by email and phone, how he explained the falsehood in the story with his byline on it, nor did he reveal who the AP source actually was.
He can rot in hell as far as I'm concerned, he's as much part of the problem as the original liar.
The first story had no byline. The original "the crowd bood" story, dateline West Allis, Wisconsin, had no byline. The original articl did not have Tom Hays' name on the byline, it had no name on the byline.
Hays incorporated that story into an agglomeration that had his name on the byline. Blame who you want. I'm just reciting facts.
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