The Associated Press is the largest wire service providing thousands of media outlets with news content. Particularly in an era where financial cutbacks in the media industry have resulted in fewer media outlets paying for their own dedicated foreign correspondents, the AP’s reach and influence has only increased.
So an error in an AP story can spread far and wide.
Such was the case on September 18, 2017, in an otherwise non-controversial story on Polish-Jewish relations.
The reference above is meant to refer to the Polish and Israeli capital cities. Except Tel Aviv isn’t Israel’s capital, Jerusalem is.
HonestReporting reached out to AP but while we privately received an acknowledgment that this shouldn’t have happened and was most likely a result of a story filed by a journalist who does not cover the Mideast beat, a correction was not forthcoming.
A demonstration of the “multiplier effect” that this can have could be seen in the number of media outlets that republished the AP story, including:
In addition, numerous local newspapers carried the AP feed, including the Miami Herald, Seattle Times, Minnesota Star Tribune, Kansas City Star, Houston Chronicle and San Francisco Chronicle, to name but a few.
Unsurprisingly, Israeli or Jewish publications that ran the story, such as The Times of Israel and Hamodia quickly corrected after HR alerted them. As for the others – nothing.
This is hardly a surprise as most editors take their AP feed for granted and don’t consider checking AP stories to be a necessary time investment. Instead, they rely on AP itself to update stories and send out corrections as and when necessary.
Essentially AP stories arrive at third party news sites with a built-in kosher certificate. Without an official AP correction, media outlets feel neither responsible nor obliged to make changes or corrections.
That’s not to say that nothing can be done in a case like this. While HonestReporting monitors a huge number of media outlets, we rely on you, our subscribers, to keep us informed on a local level. If you see examples of anti-Israel bias in your local newspaper, whether it is a wire service story or something written by a media outlet’s own reporter, let us know by sending us a message on our Red Alert page. If your tip ends in a success, you might even be recognized as our Watchdog of the Week!
If you see this AP story republished, contact your local media outlet and request a correction. Let us know if you get a response or a success!
