Booing the AP

[Chanman]

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

HEADLINE: Bill Clinton hospitalized with chest pains, will face bypass surgery

BYLINE: TOM HAYS; Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: NEW YORK

Former President Bill Clinton checked into a Manhattan hospital Friday with chest pains and will soon undergo bypass surgery, his office announced.

An angiogram given to Clinton revealed "significant blockage," said a Democratic official, who had discussed the condition with the former president's staff and spoke on condition of anonymity. It did not appear that Clinton suffered a heart attack, the official said.

Clinton, 58, was admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia after undergoing initial testing near his suburban home, his office said. Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, were to be with the president in the city, the statement said.

Clinton canceled a two-day joint trip with his wife across upstate New York.

Sen. Clinton made a brief appearance Friday at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, after which she noted that her husband was hospitalized and would need heart surgery, and apologized for leaving right away. "He's in excellent hands," she said.

Dozens of reporters and camera crews were assembled outside the city hospital, which is north of Clinton's Harlem office. Hospital officials had no immediate comment.

There was no word on when the surgery would take place. A source speaking on condition of anonymity said the surgery was not likely to take place Friday, but instead at a later date.

In Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton's mother-in-law, Dorothy Rodham, said Clinton had called her to tell her about the situation.

"He sounded wonderful as usual and very upbeat, as he always is," she said. "I just told him how much I love him."

She said she didn't know if he was in the hospital when he called.

Clinton had a cancerous growth removed from his back shortly after leaving office in early 2001. It turned out to be basal cell carcinoma, the most treatable form of skin cancer. In 1996, he had had a precancerous lesion removed from his nose and a year before that had a benign cyst taken off his chest.

Other than that, Clinton has had the normal health problems that often accompany aging - periods of slightly elevated cholesterol and hearing loss - and an appetite for junk food. In 1997, he was fitted with hearing aids. He has also suffered from allergies.

Clinton went to Northern Westchester Hospital on Thursday after suffering "mild chest pain" and shortness of breath, his office said in a statement. He spent the night at his Chappaqua home, but checked into the Manhattan hospital after further tests Friday revealed the medical problem.

"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.

In June, a Clinton spokesman characterized the ex-president as "doing very well" health-wise. The 42nd president has struggled with a weight problem, but had recently seemed much leaner at public appearances.

During his two terms as president, Clinton was known for his love of fast food. But in January of this year, Clinton said he had gone on "The South Beach Diet" and started a workout regimen.

Clinton has led an active lifestyle since leaving office. Most recently, he was on the road plugging his memoirs, "My Life."

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Frank Eltman in New York, David Hammer in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Marc Humbert in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.

 

[Chanman]

Another Whopper from the Associated Press

Wizbang points out another hoax perpetrated by the Associated Press. AP reporter Roland Prinz has attacked Arnold Schwarzenegger's convention speech as historically inaccurate. Prinz cited two alleged inaccuracies; the first was Arnold's claim to have seen Soviet tanks in the streets of Austria when he was a boy.

Prinz quotes an Austrian historian:

"It's a fact -- as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.
Schwarzenegger, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born on July 30, 1947, when Styria and the neighboring province of Carinthia belonged to the British zone. The Soviets already had left Styria in July 1945, less than three months after the end of the war, Karner noted.


This criticism is absurd. Arnold didn't say that he saw Soviet troops in Styria; on the contrary, he made it clear that he was talking about the Soviet zone:

When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector.
So what's the point? There isn't any. What Arnold said was precisely accurate.

Some versions of the AP article, like this one on CNN, at least include a quote from Arnold's spokeswoman to the effect that Arnold never said the tanks were in his home town, and he referred to the Soviet sector. This is a bit odd, since anyone who read Arnold's actual words would realize that the AP story isn't a story, and it is hard to understand how a news organization like CNN can run an article like this one without spending two minutes to determine whether there is any story there or not.

Worse yet are the many news outlets that ran the AP story, but without the explanation from Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman. See, for example, the Guardian's version of the article. This Wisconsin television station headlines its story: "Schwarzenegger Ridiculed For Falsehoods In Speech." But, amazingly enough, the station actually prints the relevant portions of Schwarzenegger's speech immediately after the truncated AP story. Apparently no one read the speech, and compared it to what was said by the Austrian historian.

The second inaccuracy alleged by the AP is Arnold's characterization of Austria as a "socialist" country. Prinz points out that: "Austria was governed by coalition governments, including the conservative People's Party and the Social Democratic Party. Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors were conservatives -- not Socialists."

Of course, Arnold did not say that the chancellor of Austria was a member of the Socialist Party. As his audience clearly understood, he was talking about a government-dominated economy of the sort that prevailed over most if not all of western Europe in the post-war years. The fact that Austria's Chancellors came from the "conservative" People's Party does not invalidate Arnold's point.

Here is how the U.S. State Department describes Austria's economy during the relevant time:

Austria has a well-developed social market economy with a high standard of living in which the government has played an important role. The government nationalized many of the country's largest firms in the early post-war period to protect them from Soviet takeover as war reparations. For many years, the government and its state-owned industries conglomerate played a very important role in the Austrian economy. However, starting in the early 1990s, the group broke apart, state-owned firms started to operate largely as private businesses, and the government wholly or partially privatized many of these firms.
Which is, of course, exacctly what Arnold was talking about. It is also worth noting that three years before Schwarzenegger left Austria, the "conservative" People's Party, which had for some years governed in coalition with the Socialist Party, took a sharp swing to the left:

After much debate, in 1965 the [People's] party adopted the Klagenfurt Manifesto, which referred to the ?VP as an "open people's party" of the "new center." The manifesto laid less emphasis than previous ones on the priority of personal property in a democracy. It also stressed the importance of expanding economic welfare and educational opportunities for all social groups.
All of which helps to explain why Arnold came to America in search of freedom and economic opportunity.

So the AP's claim that Schwarzenegger misrepresented the postwar history of Austria is a transparent falsehood. Once again, the AP isn't reporting the news; it is trying to help the Democrats win the election, by any means necessary.

But the fact that the AP story is false--and obviously false, to anyone who bothers to read what Arnold actually said--has not prevented it from being picked up by, at current count, 539 news outlets.

 

[djv]

Was Austria in WW II?

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

and while on liberal media how about your touted "fair and balanced CNN DJV. Appears 2 of their people have now been enlisted by Kerry camp as advisors --AND WILL CONTINUE to report on CNN (Clinton News Network)

--- I can just see the whining going on if Fox did something like that--AND I quarantee you there will STILL be die hard liberals saying CNN is not liberal propaganda outlet.

I'll put their names up later today.I did search and surprise/surprise no media reporting on it---Must have been a Fox exclusive

 

[djv]

AP blew it yesterday. They missed the brilliant I don't have a clue Dick Cheney remark. So none American that little fat puke should have someone smack him. Dam coward ducks but talks tough.