Free Republic

Hey, at least he got the shot, right? Isn't that all that matters? I mean come on, he's a photo-journalist for goodness sake. He can't inject himself into the story. That would be a breach of journalistic ethics. A real credit to his profession, this guy. Photos, but no video.

Ron Fournier says he regards Sandy Johnson, his predecessor as head of The Associated Press’s Washington bureau, as “a mentor.” Johnson, though, regards Fournier, who replaced her in a hard-feelings shake-up in May, as a threat to one of the most influential institutions in American journalism. “I loved the Washington bureau,” said Johnson, who left the AP after losing the prestigious position. “I just hope he doesn’t destroy it.” There’s more to her vinegary remark than just the aftertaste of a sour parting. Fournier is a main engine in a high-stakes experiment at the 162-year old wire to move from...

A detailed account of the character assassination leveled by the Associated Press against an Ohio teacher.

Bloggers: Big Media Is Watching As content recognition software gets more sophisticated, expect more copyright-related battles online like the recent AP-blogger flap by Peter Burrows The Associated Press unleashed a firestorm in the blogosphere earlier this month when it demanded that a political site take down AP content it said violated copyrights. Bloggers, including Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.com and Markos Moulitas of Daily Kos, cried foul, saying the AP's move threatened the free flow of information over the Web. The furor abated a few days later when the AP tempered its demands. But the dustup between the AP and bloggers...

Excerpt - As the economic pressure on newspapers intensifies, the Associated Press, a 162-year-old newsgathering cooperative for the industry, is beginning to fracture. Long a newspaper-centric organization, the AP has shifted its focus in recent years. With readers and advertisers migrating away from news on printed paper and toward cable TV and the Web, the AP is devoting more of its resources to producing content for other news outlets. These include the very Web portals that pose the greatest competition for newspapers, such as Yahoo and Google, which are now among the AP's biggest customers. For some editors, the AP's...

As the economic pressure on newspapers intensifies, the Associated Press, a 162-year-old newsgathering cooperative for the industry, is beginning to fracture. Long a newspaper-centric organization, the AP has shifted its focus in recent years. With readers and advertisers migrating away from news on printed paper and toward cable TV and the Web, the AP is devoting more of its resources to producing content for other news outlets. These include the very Web portals that pose the greatest competition for newspapers, such as Yahoo and Google, which are now among the AP's biggest customers. For some editors, the AP's strategy, coupled...

I don't blame the Associated Press for refusing to participate in a conversation about its attempts to overthrow government authority and rewrite copyright law its own liking. The AP is like a husband who foolishly told his wife that the new jeans do make her butt look big. The best way to limit damage at that point is to simply shut up and hope the subject eventually goes away. But this issue isn't going away. The AP is doing nothing less than attempting to unilaterally rewrite copyright law, and also undermine citizens' freedom to criticize the news media. It's just...

No money changed hands but Rogers Cadenhead, who owns the Retort, evidently agreed to tweak the offending posts to bring them into compliance with the AP’s guidelines. And what might those guidelines be? He’s not saying. Yet. I spent around two hours yesterday talking to AP attorneys about their specific objections to the user blog entries in dispute, going line by line through the text to pinpoint exactly where they have intellectual property concerns in the short excerpts that were posted. I won’t reveal the details of this discussion until AP releases the guidelines for bloggers that it promised on...

Hard to believe that all of the discourse (public and private) on how the AP handled the way its material was being used by the Drudge Retort boils down to this for now?a non-response response........[snip] ""In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider...

Almost every day a news report comes out linking something to climate change – obesity, food riots or a century of wildfires. Some of the claims seem especially outlandish. Sometimes they are. On June 18, CBS.com posted a story claiming that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago because of global warming. The story had no byline, but was attributed to the Associated Press. The story was identical to a June 17 Market Wire press release attributed to Tom Chalko, the scientist that made the claim of the earthquake/global...

The Internet firestorm over the Associated Press’s heavy-handed attempt to bully bloggers over fair use article excerpts has been absolutely schadenfreude-licious. Now, it’s time to turn the tables. If your blog or blog commenters have ever been quoted by the AP, listen up: It’s time to prepare a bill and demand payment. First, a quick recap: AP showered a left-wing site with cease-and-desist letters, prompting many political and tech sites to boycott AP content. The latest uproar involves the AP’s pricing scheme charging bloggers $2.50/word and then scaling for excerpt usage. Here’s a screenshot of the media giant’s web usage...

This weblog does not belong to the Media Bloggers Association. This weblog had never heard of the Media Bloggers Association until yesterday, when the Associated Press made an announcement: AP to meet with blogging group to form guidelines The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers’ group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online. Jim Kennedy, the AP’s director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part...

An unbylined Associated Press report yesterday, at least as carried at MSNBC, acknowledges improvement, and then explains why it's not going to get much future coverage from the wire service as long as things stay that way: BAGHDAD - Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets. Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential...

Bloggers, like me, are voicing their views and commentary on the news (and falsehoods, etc) of the day as is our right under the constitution.  When a corporation tries to tell me I cannot comment, criticize (and more often correct) their lousy product I lose all interest in being reasonable.  There are lines you do not cross because they cannot be uncrossed. The-news-source-that-shall-not-be-named, which went after bloggers for excerpting and linking their biased and error prone ‘news’ articles, crossed that line - in full hypocrisy it seems: 1. The AP is essentially arguing that anyone who excerpts 33 to 79...

Google defeated in Belgian copyright case; everyone but Google loses By Ken Fisher | Published: February 13, 2007 - 11:48AM CT The group of disgruntled newspapers in Belgium that sued Google for copyright infringement has emerged victorious after a decision was granted in their favor today in court. The judgment echoes a previous ruling from the Court of First Instance in Brussels that found Google in violation of copyright law when the company published extracts of articles from Belgian newspaper publishers. Copiepresse, the Belgium copyright group representing the nearly 20 papers scandalized by Google News, now gets its wish: Google...

In other words, the AP monster has turned on its creators and is now taking their money while putting them out of business. Last September it was announced that the AP signed a contract with Google News giving its original wire stories prominence, while reducing traffic and presumably online ad revenues at AP members’ own sites. And now the AP is turning on its creators once again, this time launching a program to make its stories available on iPhones, preempting its members’ necessary efforts to restore their ability to generate and deliver their own, valuable original content. But still,...

Google deal uncovers truth that AP is now a competitor to newspapers, and papers are suckers for being members of it 9/2/07Posted by Steve Boriss in Uncategorized. trackback As reported by Jeff Jarvis and many others, Google News has just reached the incredibly obvious conclusion that its readers would rather not wade through dozens of nearly identical versions of the same original AP story that are published by its member papers. So, striking a deal with AP and three foreign wire services, Google News will now feature the originating wire service’s story, reducing the prominence and interest in similar members’ stories,...

Marshall Field III, grandson of the founder of the department store of the same name, also challenged the AP monopoly with mixed results. He tried to launch the Chicago Sun in 1941, but struggled because AP member Chicago Tribune blocked his membership, freezing him out of the ultra low-cost news available to members. Field took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the AP in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Court in its decision quoted legendary appellate judge Learned Hand, who wrote of the dangers of AP’s monopoly: “In the production of...

The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant last week when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere. Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of. [snip] [snip]To citizen journalists out in cyberspace, AP’s proclamation against one little aggregate site (much smaller in comparison to, say, Digg, etc.) rang like a shot across the bow of fair use, especially after an AP spokesperson announced that, from here...

The Associated Press is at it again. Not content with attempting to bring about the end of Snapped Shot, my little wire-photo-critiquing hobby, they’re now going after the dastardly news commentators over at the Drudge Retort for alleged copyright violations. Will they ever learn how this Internet thing works? Back in March, I was delighted to receive a love letter from the AP’s legal department, which kindly informed me that they didn’t particularly care for me. You can read all about those travails in the piece I wrote for Pajamas Media back then. (Pun intended.)[snip] [snip]This harkens back to memories...

The Associated Press is trying to back out of an Old Media-New Media fight that it didn’t quite mean to pick. The 162-year-old news service will sit down with representatives of a bloggers group Thursday to devise guidelines allowing Internet commentators to use excerpts from AP stories and broadcasts. The AP provoked outrage in the blogosphere last week when it issued a blunt legal demand that the Drudge Retort, a small online news and commentary site, remove seven posts containing snippets –- all less than 80 words long –- from AP stories. The website, named in satirical homage to the...

So, the AP has now riposted to The Brouhaha with a re-post of its pricing for quoting its words (see here for the price tabs): There are 3 rates - For Profits, Educationals, and Registered not for profits. The Educationals and Not for Profits have the same pricing. I will now perform my own value-added analysis, which last time I looked qualifies as Fair Usage. If you graph the rates, it looks like this: AP Pricing Graph showing arbitrage points As you can see, there are a few interesting points of inflection: - The pricings are the same, no matter...

This is our Boston tea Party. The Associated Press wants to levy a $12.50 and up license fee (aka extortion fee) on any blogger who quotes more than 4 words from one of their propaganda pieces. This is an outrageous attempt to control the blogosphere and free speech itself. To hell with their license fee and to hell with the AP. Any AP article that gets posted to FR will be jettisoned into the harbor posthaste. Please do not post any AP material to FR excerpted or not.

Our list of sites that must be excerpted due to copyright concerns continues to grow, but now the Associated Press is upping the ante. Not only are they not allowing full text postings, they're threatening to sue bloggers who allow the posting of AP titles and brief excerpts or even if their posters post brief quotes from AP articles within a discussion thread. AP is now developing their own rules for fair use and will decide when, how and what they will allow the public to quote from their articles. And their rules are much more restrictive than is commonly...

As we wait with bated breath for the Associated Press to come down from the mountain with its own rules for "fair use for bloggers," Patrick Nielsen Hayden gives us a sense of what the AP considers fair use (found via Boing Boing). Apparently, for quite some time, the AP has had up a page that lists out prices for quoting AP text. I will quote the list prices, and hope I don't get a DMCA takedown: 5-25 words: $ 12.50 26-50 words: $ 17.50 51-100 words: $ 25.00 101-250 words: $ 50.00 251 words and up: $ 100.00 Oh,...

Face it, blogs exist so we don't have to read the news for comprehension The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant last week when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere. Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of. As part of the big mea culpa, the AP's Jim Kennedy pledged to meet this week with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (which is,...

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of...

NEW YORK - The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online. Jim Kennedy, the AP's director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it. The meeting comes after AP sent a legal...

The Associated Press ran a news story on Tuesday saying Barack Obama has captured enough delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee. On the heels of the article AP trotted out a comparison piece contrasting Obama and eventual GOP nominee John McCain on top issues. However, the Associated Press piece contains a glaring error. It fails to fully articulate the manner in which Obama has pressed the drumbeat for abortion. Full story at: http://www.LifeNews.com/nat3957.html

I want . . Freedom of the press to be the right not to be lied to. You are confused. So very seriously confused about the First Amendment, that you are not thinking any more clearly about it than I was before the mid-1990s, when I began to see through the system by which the "journalistic objectivity" con is perpetrated. And since I was already in my fifties by then, I have every reason to understand how you might see things the way you do. Freedom of the press is much more like "the right to lie to you"...

How do you get the Associated Press to use the word "terrorism" in an article without scare quotes?

I hate to pick on a fellow journalist, but if I were Jeannine Aversa of the Associated Press, I would be embarrassed. Ms. Aversa covers economic issues for the AP, and I guess it’s hard to come up with actual economic facts every day, so she likes to publish predictions. This tends to precipitate the following chain of events: Ms. Aversa reports that economists expect the economy to tank, jobs to disappear, etc. The economy does not tank, and jobs do not disappear (at least not as much as “economists expected”); Ms. Aversa reports economists’ surprise. Ms. Aversa reports that...

With the Olympics coming on, what's more poignant than the image of the sprinter hopefully awaiting the official time, only to learn he missed the record by 1/100th of a second? I'm in that same heartbroken mood for the Associated Press this morning. The wire service came so close to equalling the world record for revealing the Republican party affiliation of someone finding himself sideways of the law. Check out the first sentence from this AP story of April 17th: "A Republican congressional candidate was charged Thursday with felony burglary and criminal trespass stemming from an encounter last year with...

BAGHDAD, (AP) -- The U.S. military released Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein on Wednesday after holding him for more than two years without filing formal charges. Hussein, 36, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was taken to the site aboard a prisoner bus and left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe. He was smiling and appeared in good health. "I want to thank all the people working in AP. ... I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent. I thank everybody," Hussein said after being freed. AP President Tom...

Some have accused the media of trying to undermine the war effort by swaying public opinion with images of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, but the visuals are justified and important, according to Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley. Curley was the keynote speaker of the Sunshine Week dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 18. Curley defended the media's use of the controversial photographs as "moving and very unifying." "Well, we've all tried and we've all been turned down, and I think your question is another reminder we should keep trying," Curley said when...

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:42 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Winter storms and snow notwithstanding, this winter was still warmer than average worldwide, the government reported Thursday. The global temperature for meteorological winter -- December, January and February -- averaged 54.38 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.58 degrees warmer than normal for the last century, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported. Temperatures have been rising over recent years, raising concerns about the effects of global warming, generally attributed to human-induced impacts on the atmosphere. While it was warmer than normal, the just completed winter was the coolest since 2000-2001, which...

Opening paragraph from the New York Times article on the eco-terrorists who burned three new homes north of Seattle today [emphasis added]: For people who are anti-sprawl activists — or have baser motives — a new-built house sitting empty in a previously rural area evidently makes a ripe target for an attack by fire. Consider also the article's headline "House Fires With a Message in the Northwest." Yes, think of it as a bonus. Not just a housefire . . . a housefire with a message!

AP Shuts Down Blogger With Threats of Legal Action Well, here is what might be a landmark case for the blogosphere, for the Internet, and for the future of our new media, citizen journalism. The AP has just sent a cease and desist letter to Brian C. Ledbetter telling him to stop using their copyrighted images on his website, snappedshot.com. Snappedshot.com is a site predicated on criticism of photo-journalism. In pursuit of his criticism, Mr. Ledbetter uses photos from across the web that he thinks are doctored or misleading in some way. He then reports his opinion on the bias...

AP Hints Pro-Lifers Bigger Terrorists Than Foreign Radicals By Dave Pierre | February 20, 2008 - 00:22 ET Let me get this straight: On September 11, 2001, terrorists brutally exterminated nearly 3,000 Americans, obliterated the landscape of lower Manhattan, and pummeled the headquarters of the United States's national defense. And since that same date nearly six-and-a-half years ago, pro-lifers have committed a grand total of zero murders, attempted murders, and bombings directed at abortion workers and clinics across the United States and Canada. So the Associated Press implies that the bigger threat of terrorism to this country comes from ......

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could...

Conservative radio host and political pundit, Jed Babbin, did a great job of smacking the Associated Press around in an editorial in Human Events, today. Calling the AP "one of the most politically activist media outlets" out there and pointing out that the wire service is often "caught Hillary-handed," Babbin does a great job of handing the AP its hat. And Babbin warns that every candidate "who exudes a whiff of conservatism" will see the APs guns leveled upon them. To prove his case, Babbin uses the example of how the AP is doing it's level best to destroy the...

A conservative comedian [yes, there are some], appears at a venue in a heavily-white suburb at a campaign event for a white candidate and tells his audience composed overwhelmingly of people of pallor they'd be embarrassed if they supported a black candidate and the white candidate won, saying "Oh no. I can't call him now. I had that black guy. What was I thinking?" What are the odds the MSM would laugh it off? But when Chris Rock does the equivalent on behalf of Barack Obama, the MSM appears to raise nary an eyebrow. Rock appeared last night at an...

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military's plan to seek a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges or evidence against him makes a mockery of American democratic principles, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example—and not the first of its kind—of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley said in a column in The Washington Post. The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a complaint against Bilal...

NEW YORK (AP) — Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press, called on news executives Thursday to "stop pining" for the past and adapt to the new ways that news is being distributed and consumed. Curley said in a speech that news organizations should quit thinking like gatekeepers of information and reach out to people who are accustomed to receiving news in real time online and customizing the ways they see and read it. "Editors need to stop pining for the old world and intensify the leading to the new one," Curley told a fundraising dinner for the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship,...

Notice Norah O'Donnell glancing down? Although the screen graphic refers to the Lewinsky scandal, the MSNBC anchor was at that moment discussing the Democrats's $1 trillion tax proposal with Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY). As Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rangel is the key mover behind the tax plan. O'Donnell, obviously reading from a document, described the proposal as a plan "to eliminate the alternative minimum tax and ease the tax burdens of most Americans by asking the rich and some corporations to pay more.

Imagine this scenario: A Republican Mayor of a famous city lies about his service in Vietnam and is caught at it but before that revelation comes to light he was already in trouble as he was about to be recalled by the citizenry for commonly being absent at city council meetings. What's more he also presides over a city council that has several members under investigation for sexual misconduct, drunk driving and at least one recent council member who is in jail serving a conviction for bribery. Imagine how the MSM would howl over the Republican "culture of corruption?"...

The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers. Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science. "I've been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they're saying to me, 'We're seeing things we've never seen before,'" said Sandy Schneider,...

As wacky theories go, it might not be quite up there with the stuff the "steel doesn't melt" truthies put out. But the Associated Press's Tom Raum has had a stunning little meltdown of his own. In an "analysis" piece the AP put out today, "After 4 years of errors, Bush definition of ‘victory’ in Iraq is far more modest," Raum flatly states: Bush’s decision to wage a vendetta against Saddam Hussein as retribution for the Sept. 11 attacks — six years ago Tuesday — led to many miscalculations and mistakes. And what evidence does Raum offer in support of...

A truck bomb struck a Shi'ite mosque today in central Baghdad, killing 78 people and wounding more than 200, even as some 10,000 U.S. soldiers northeast of the capital used heavily armored Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles to battle their way into an al Qaeda sanctuary.