Posted on 09/03/2004 9:40:17 PM PDT by BigSkyFreeper
Published: September 03, 2004 10:00 PM EST
NEW YORK The Associated Press changed "boos" to "ooohhs" Friday afternoon in reporting on President George Bush's first statement to supporters on the heart ailment that has befallen former President Bill Clinton.
In a dispatch sent to subscribers in early afternoon, the AP reported that when Bush, at a campaign rally in West Allis, Wisconsin, told the crowd that he wished to send Clinton his "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery," the audience "of thousands booed. Bush did nothing to stop them."
Pretty damning, except that AP soon changed its story, only after the original appeared on many Web sites.
Several Web sites revealed that AP "retracted" the report "citing uncertainties about how to characterize the crowd's reaction."
The new version moved on the wire Friday described the same incident this way, after relating Bush's remarks: "The crowd reacted with applause and with some 'ooohs,' apparently surprised by the news that Clinton was ill."
A Knight Ridder/Tribune (KRT) report put it this way: "Some in Bush's audience booed when he wished Clinton well...." The AFP wire report declared that after Bush's statement "thousands of boisterous supporters clapped respectfully."
It wasn't idiocy. It was intentional lying.
Hays has written many stories over the past few weeks covering the convention. None of them appeared to have any bias or slant that I can see. I would more suspect a "contributor" was at fault, as has been alledged here.
So, there are five sets of hands who all have a history of having a Liberal media agenda, involved in this story.
Even worse was when the LA Times falsely reported that Bremer left Iraq without giving a farewell speech. The "reporter" then added that it was as if Bremer was ashamed to give a speech. Well, not only did Bremer definitely give a farewell speech, but it was well-received by Iraqis, according to some of the Iraqi bloggers. The LA Times finally printed a "correction" in which the "reporter" lamely stated that Bremer's speech had not been advertised, as if the world was supposed to come to the "reporter", and not the other way around. That too was crap, because Bremer's speech had not only been mentioned on CNN, but it was SEEN on CNN!
Anyway, an email to info@ap.org with a request that it be forwarded to Tom Hays (our prime suspect, I guess) might get something worthwhile accomplished.
This section from the original Lexis-Nexis just makes me fume:
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. . .He's going to be fine," Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said at a rally in Newark, Ohio.
"But every single one of us wants to extend to him our best wishes, our prayers and our thoughts and I want you all to let a cheer out and clap that he can hear all the way to New York," Kerry said to cheers. Clinton had been expected to campaign extensively for Kerry.
President George W. Bush, campaigning in Wisconsin, wished Clinton "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery."
"He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said. Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wisconsin, booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. . . . .
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BARF!
Damage done, not least to AP's reputation. Not much they can do about it, either. Beside blackballing the stringer, but that's not something done publicly.
Time will tell just how long the Democrats will run with this lie on the campaign trail.
Lindlaw is on a similar story in Kight-Ridder newspapers, linked here earlier.
This crap has got to stop, now. The Bush team needs to fire off a strongly worded letter to both agencies demand an apology.
This was intentional deceit--and the line "Bush did nothing to stop them," was literally dripping with contempt and derision.
Fox or somebody has to get this out there. This completely discredits the AP.
Kerry reported that the Bush supporters Booed when President Bush asked everyone to pray for Clinton, but later recanted his his statement saying that he didn't say that at all, that it was the Swift Boat Crew members who were trashing him that gave that report to AP under the guise that it was from Kerry.
Jonathan Last at Galley Slaves noted them in the piece I linked to....He remarks that the reputation of all are on the line. I want to know who is responsible. He should be fired.
AP needs to make an apology and put a specific retraction over the wires.
Many places are still reporting and printing stories that indicate the corwd, or some in the corwd were booing.
There was no booing according to eyewitnesses, none on the audio tapes or video. If there was any bad behaviour it was de minimis and one would hardly expect President Bush to notice it over the cheers, since nobody else can.
They've retracted, eh? Tell that to the Guardian. It's there at this moment:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4472156,00.html
Where else in the world might this "story" be running that we haven't seen yet?
It's also still at the Boston Globe site, the screencap on post 39 which I made 11 hours ago.
Don't give those suckers an inch.
Steve Glass is at AP now?
"citing uncertainties about how to characterize the crowd's reaction."
These people are nuts. There is no question as how to characterize the reaction: it was overwhelmingly positive - almost surprisingly so. These people can't imagine Republicans being gracious to Bill Clinton in his time of crisis because they themselves couldn't find it in their heart to treat Ronald Reagan humanely while he was suffering with alzheimers for so many years.
The guy's name was Hayes.
"The crowd reacted with applause and with some 'ooohs,' apparently surprised by the news that Clinton was ill."
Nonsense. Serious arse-covering going on here. This completely misrepresents what happened. These were not "ooohs," these were "whooos." Completely different animals. The former indicates surprise, while the latter indicates agreement and support with what the speak er just said.
AP, your bias is showing.
And there was even bigger applause from the crowd when President Bush wished Clinton a "swift and speedy recovery". I even saw some young kid behind the President waving a foam finger.
They weren't "oooh'ing" or even "whoo'ing" much less "boo'ing". Think of it as a collective gasp of surprise from several thousand spectators all at once. That's what it sounded like to me.
This story has been picked up by some of the major bloggers, like Instapundit, Captain's Quarters, Command Post and more. None mentions that it was Freepers who first noticed the lie.
Here is some of what they have had to say.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Booing the AP
When the AP story about a Republican crowd booing President Bush's well-wishes for Bill Clinton first broke at 2:12 p.m., the story carried the byline of Tom Hays. After coming under fire, the AP pulled the story down. The original link now brings you to a dead page.
After a brief interlude, the AP reposted the story, minus the claims that the crowd had booed Clinton's heart scare. The revised story is here. It carries the time stamp of 2:31 p.m. and, curiously, no byline. It also carried no mention of the story's previous version, nor any mark that the new version is indeed a revision. (For those looking for it, there was one tell-tale sign in the AP's URL: The URL for the first version ended in "bush_clinton_1", while the URL for the second version ends "bush_clinton_2".)
So the AP: (1) Puts out a story with falsified reporting; (2) Pulls the story; (3) Removes the faulty reporting; (4) Makes no note of its mistake; and then (5) Pulls the byline of the reporter who made the error. If you were going to impute bad faith to the folks at AP--and at this point that's not unreasonable to do--you might suspect that they have pulled Tom Hays's byline to protect him.
Behold the power of Lexis-Nexis. The AP was able to cover their tracks on the web, but Lexis-Nexis keeps all versions of stories which carry different time-stamps. The Hays original is preserved there in its entirety:
September 3, 2004 Friday 2:12 PM Eastern Time
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 649 words
Scary that the AFP (French news agency) would be the one to get it right when our own AP lied.
Also interesting that the ultra liberal Yahoo! news selected the AP story when they tend to use AFP even more often.
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| Drudge Updating AP Lie (Audience boos as Bush offers best wishes for Clinton's recovery) |
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