AP fired reporter after dangerous blunder – Slack chats reveal chaotic process
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Has this AP reporter been asleep for … their entire career? Charitably, I can interpret this as the reporter thinking they wouldn’t make up something about a potential Article 5 event, but - and maybe it’s my cynicism about this war - wouldn’t that mean you’d want to guarantee that what you’re saying is super precise? “Russian missiles hit Poland” vs “Russian missiles fired by Ukraine hit Poland” obviously mean very different things.
Doesn’t look like LaPorta did anything wrong here, necessarily, and this looks like an editorial problem to me.
It’s stupid. No one says Chinese AK-47s fired by Ukrainian soldiers.
Someone was playing stupid.
Btw, there are a lot of reporting on how Russia uses Chinese drones, often without mentioning Ukraine uses the very same (consumer) drones.
It's certainly an editorial problem if this kind of information is not being double and triple-checked for confirmation and precision.
Welcome to the real world. Even if the intelligence offical was being scrupulously careful to lay out the facts the reporter may mishear or misunderstand the context. The only thing that would have been known immediately was that the missile was manufactured in the soviet union. The offical thinks he is telling the reporter one thing but the reporter just hears 'russian missile' and runs with it because he believes it comes from a verified source.
The Slack chat is pretty clear that the AP reporters here are just jumping to conclusions that fit their preconceptions. The reporters are breathlessly invoking article 5 as if a stray missile hitting a polish farm would rise to the level of a deliberate act of war.
The origin, both manufacturing and who fired them, seems pretty relevant in this war because both sides are using a lot of the same weapons systems.
Isn’t this assumption of knowledge/authority pretty much the same sort of appeal to validity that this quote from the Slack thread fell into?
“I can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this”
I am saying often in an effort to push a narrative or POV or get the scoop, journos may overlook inconvenient facts or appeal to an authority that perhaps they shouldn’t…since that authority may have an ulterior motive.
The gravity of the allegations required hyper-responsible journalism that did not happen here…this was a rush to get a scoop. This wasn’t a message board post that effectively had a small audience where assumptions of a rumor’s validity had essentially zero real world impact. This has the chance to create mass death.
That, logically, make the manufacturer less relevant, bordering on irrelevant.
Russia-aligned internet commenters seem to say things like that a lot. I think it's part of their cope; Russia couldn't be struggling against Ukrainians... no... they're struggling against Ukrainians with American weapons! I guess this is gentler on their egos.
Without the full force of US Intelligence and more money sent to Ukraine this year than any year of the Iraq/Afghanistan war… yes, Ukraine would have folded months ago.
This is very clearly a proxy war.
Ukraine military spending is ~$6b/yr [0] and so far this year the US has sent ~$57b of "aid" to Ukraine [1], of which ~$27b is military.
The total US commitment dwarfs the contribution from all other countries [2] and it appears there is a request for another ~$38b [3] of which ~$21b is military spending.
So while one could claim that the US is not instigating Ukraine govt to war, it's clear that the US is funding a greater part of the military activities by providing equipment for the war to the tune of at least (to date) 4-5x Ukraine's normal military spending each year.
[0]. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1293277/ukraine-military... [1]. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-... [2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine... [3]. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...
Saying something like "can’t imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this" in the first place shows a misunderstanding of what the point of such "intelligence" is: collecting (often-dubious) information as quickly as possible to enable probabilistic (but sometimes wrong) assessments for decision-making.
Nobody with the sort of fundamental lack of judgement shown by Gera belongs anywhere near an editorial chain of command.
Speaking of US officials, or from any country at all, they don't really care about evidence. It's political games that news media feeds with like vultures, sometimes.
>It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
>President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...
Why are a bunch of journalists concerned with how fast they can send out a push notification?? is the world that creates that incentive healthy? What can we do to remove the incentive that led to people having this kind of a discussion on a slack channel while one dude is at a doctors appointment?
This seems like an utter failure of the editorial process in this case. Also the English language (and parentheticals) are hard!
And journalists fight over that - it’s going to be hard to countermand as long as we want “news” and not “olds”.
Anyway they definitely messed up big time with that rocket story but if the chats are to be believed it seems like an honest mistake. I agree with you that this isn't how things should be done but in practice there's always been pressure to break stories as fast as possible. It's just the way the industry works and I'd at least partly blame this on the readers as well. People should prioritize quality and truth over speed but that's not how it works. Social media needs its news and it needs it now. If you wait hours or even a day until the situation is clear, at that point the discussions have already moved on.
Turns out the author is an AP journalist, but works for CNN and has a long history of misrepresenting and omitting the facts about this topic.
I agree AP is on the down slope.
Fortunately many people have recently been inoculated with a very healthy distrust of corporate media, so most people I know were pretty sure this story was hogwash from the beginning.
I think this may be a case of attributing malice to incompetence.
Delete the internet, then return to newspapers published once a day. Short of that, it's hopeless. With continuous 24/7 publishing, journalists race to beat each other.
I think it's important to remember that NATO isn't an unthinking machine that executes mechanistically. Supposing Russia had been responsible for those missiles, I sincerely doubt that would have been the start of WW3. Nobody really wants that outcome, so the humans in the loop would bend over backwards to find a way to prevent that. This might mean pretending to not notice the missile strikes, or asserting they were accidents. I think both Russia and NATO would prefer Russia admitting to an accident and paying out some reparations to a full blown WW3.
WW3 happens if there's really no other choice, as perceived by NATO and/or Russian leadership.
At any rate, if they were wrong too seeing the AP publish it citing their own intelligence as a source wouldn't have made them any more confident in their analysis.
Again, you are right that it is not likely at all that any side would act on a mere report, but the stakes are so high that even a 1% chance of a misunderstanding is very dangerous.
What I think would be crazy was if this news was real and some nobody journalists were sitting on this info based on those kind of considerations. I mean, these aren't the people I want making such decisions. Let them pass on the information they have as accurately as possible, and let an elected representative act on it.
My personal view. They were Russian missiles, but it was 100% an error. NATO doesn’t want to have to respond so they blame Ukraine, Ukraine will use this to negotiate more weapons and air defenses.
I think that's a reasonable read. That's what I took away from it initially. He said an official source, which had been vetted, said a thing.
The fact that he didn't make it clear that this source had not been vetted for this particular report is negligent at best.
Either the source is wrong or LaPorta was confused about "Russian missile" i.e. was it Russian made or fired by the Russian Federation?
If they think the population is going to quickly turn on them then they hesitate to commit themselves.
As soon as this report was published I saw Reddit froth at the mouth to invoke Article 5 and call up Schwarzenegger and Rambo to teach the evil commie-nazis that this time they’ve crossed the line.
I wouldn’t be surprised if 50% of them will never even hear this story was retracted and someone got fired over it.
Reddit isn’t real life, but yes; there’s a large group of people who grew up experiencing war as an enjoyable clip show on CNN or as “Soldier returns home to puppy after 2 years in Iraq” on YouTube, who wouldn’t mind at all getting into yet another “war”.
For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwerBZG83YM
Ron Nixon could click a button on a launch document saying "I vetted the source per the rules", and not rely on someone saying something vague about the fact that he had vetted the source for past uses.
A Soviet-made (pre-USSR) S-300 was fired from within Ukraine to outside of her border.
S-300 was (presumably from Internet-source) manufactured within Ukraine (during Soviet days).
So we should really be looking into:
- how was it hooked up the S-300 fire and control to the Internet, securely or unsecurely.
- who wrote the S-300 software
- who fired the weapon ... arguably remotely.
Of course, I assume that fire and control has "Internet" option for maximum military flexibility.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_missile_explosion_in_Po...
One way the AP could handle this situation is to bring in an outside investigation panel of impeccable credentials.
Outside journalists could also investigate without approval (that's one of their capabilities), but access to information might be harder, and then there's the question of why AP isn't driving that.
Unless he completely made up the information he received, or lied about the attribution in the internal slack chat, he should not have been fired for this. This was an editorial error.
In fact, the exact information he passed along was factually correct by one interpretation. The S-300 rockets were "Russian" in the sense that they were Russian manufacturing. They were not "Russian" in the sense that they were fired by Russian armed forces (to the best of our knowledge).
Really think the AP has tried to pin the blame on this one reporter incorrectly.
Oh, Twenty American guided missiles killed Houthi fighters —but but they were fired by Saudi Arabian forces from Saudi Arabia. Or French Exocet missiles killed blah blah blah in blah blah blah (without further context?)
You want to know who in hell fired them not who the hell actually manufactured the damned armaments. WTF kind of idiotic reporting is that?
When they report ISIS or Taliban killing people they might mention it was with AK-47s but they don't mention where they were manufactured. They may say things like The Taliban are buying AK-47s from China which they then issue to their members.
If this reporter wanted to be correct, they likely want to say Soviet missile fired by Ukraine, given the age of the missile fired, it was likely of vintage manufacture.
Another funny fact that most likely it's USSR-made missile. I don't think Ukraine bought any arms from Russia, so everything they have is USSR-made they were an integral part of.
https://uk-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%96%D1%83%...
I think if the reporter knew the missiles were fired by Ukrainian forces but manufactured by Russia, then he's ultimately responsible for communicating that in a clear way that isn't going to be misconstrued to mean something it doesn't.
In this case though I think it's more likely that his source told him something that wasn't true, and there was a misunderstanding about just how well-vetted the source was. Whether the reporter is responsible for that is less clear -- in that case it seems like calling it an editorial mistake rather than the reporter's mistake seems reasonable to me.
I agree with this completely.
> In this case though I think it's more likely that his source told him something that wasn't true…
My point was that it could also been that the source told him something that was true, but the thing he understood it to mean was false.
So, source says “a Russian S-300 missile hit Ukraine” (where Russian was just intended to be a clarification about the manufacture of S-300), the journalist misunderstands as “a Russian launched missile hit Ukraine”, and writes the slack message.
Obviously, this is just a hypothetical, but it’s an example of why editorial should’ve waited until they had another source, and taken time to clarify/vet.
That's a fucking terrible interpretation. By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian coz UA happened to use some of russian equipment...
Actually no, it's not terrible, it's outright malicious
Well, no, I made a pretty clear distinction about what context we were using "Russian" to refer to.
By that interpretation both sides of the war in Ukraine use Russian manufactured weapons. Which isn't a crazy thing to suggest, since it's manifestly true.
It seems very likely to me that the journalist meant "Russian-fired rocket". But is that what their source meant? I could easily see a conversation where a source said "Russian missile" referring to the type or manufacture of the missile, and the journalist misunderstood that as "Russian missile" referring to the army who fired it. Clearly, from the context of the slack conversation, this happened quickly without a lot of time to clear up the context.
Could it make sense for someone to communicate that idea? Sure, absolutely.
Does it make sense to say the sentence you wrote? It really depends on who is saying what, and in which context!
My main point was: this looks like it was a misunderstanding (which, unless the source was fabricated, or just lying to the journalist, it was). I was presenting a hypothetical context in which that misunderstanding could arise.
If you had no idea who the plane belonged to, it wouldn't be very strange to say that it was an American-manufactured plane.
It was a messup on a few different axes, but it's started with bad journalism.
Whether or not the guy was fired as a scapegoat or to cover up someone else's mistake is, heh, not something we have reportable sourcing for.
Did you read the slack chat?
The journalist 100% does not need another source to inform his internal team of the initial story or the sourcing.
Did the journalist make the decision to publish? NO! They said that decision was above their pay grade. When people asked for clarifying information, they said they didn't have any.
That's why it was an editorial mistake.
Frankly, I simply don't see how you can conclude the journalist needed another source, given that it clearly it wasn't their decision to publish the article. That was an...editorial decision! Which is why I think the blame for publishing without enough information should go to...the editorial team
To publish, maybe. He was at a doctors appointment, got a tip, and passed it to his boss. He didn't write the news alert. If they wanted more context, the other people on the chat should have found some.
Their retraction note is very brief, and simply states the information was wrong.
Edit: pasting the entire message
> WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In earlier versions of a story published November 15, 2022, The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zelenskyy-kher...
He posts the received tip at 1:32, mentions his doctors appt at 1:38. Lisa says sending alert at 1:40.
<span class="Timestamp Component-root-0-2-39 Component-timestamp-0-2-38" data-key="timestamp" data-source="2022-11-15T18:41:15Z" title="2022-11-15 18:41:15 - Tue Nov 15 2022 13:41:15 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time)">November 15, 2022</span>
which exactly corresponds to the 1:41pm "alert sent" message in the screenshotted Slack conversation. So they did indeed publish it based on this Slack thread.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/nato-ap-news-alert-europe-poland-...
Seems like an optimistic assumption.
The reporter literally passed on a tip that missiles (alleged to be Russian type missiles) had landed in Poland (true).
He also passed on that this came from a previously vetted source (also true).
After this point the story was literally in the hands of the editorial staff.
James: "That call is above my pay grade" + "I'm at a doctor's appointment".
Zeina says "source is vetted".
Newsflash sent. Then later retracted.
Laporta fired.
Just flabbergasting.
I understand why "Russia fires on Poland" is news.
Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?
I think Russia deserves most of the blame for this incident, since it wouldn't have happened if they weren't trying to destroy their neighbor.
Zelensky continuing to insist the missile that hit Poland was launched by Russia would be news I suppose. I think that's what he was saying early on, but I haven't been following the story; maybe he gave up on that once more information came out.
Because that's not what happened? That's spin. In fact Ukraine jumped on this story only once the AP published it. It's popular to attribute this to Ukrainian propaganda in some circles, but (heh, again getting to the actual subject at hand) that's not something you can report unless you can find evidence.
All the facts we know point to the Ukrainian government being just as fooled by the AP story as we were.
1) Article 5. If Poland is attacked NATO would have to use whatever force was needed to protect it. In Russia's case, that means war against a nuclear power. In Ukraine's case, it means telling them NATO'll stop delivering weapons and Ukraine can fight Russia alone unless they apologize. Even if there was a war with Ukraine, it's not a nuclear power and wouldn't last long against NATO.
2) It was an accident. Russia launching on Poland could have been intentional. Ukraine almost certainly did it by mistake. (BTW, Russia apologizing in an hour and paying reparations would likely also have had no long term effect). Since it was an accident Ukraine probably blamed Russia thinking it was Russia since they didn't think they had done it. And by "blamed" I mean, it was after the AP story brought it to light. So more like denied it was them. Fog of war and all.
If we assume that Russia is dying to give NATO an excuse to escalate, i.e. that they're insane and want to destroy the world.
The same reason that a lot of people assumed that "Russia fires a single missile at Poland" was not an obvious, tragic accident from the get-go. Motivated thinking.
Giving such credit (even with the disclaimer of bad) where credit is *no* due is why the "news media" has become so pathetic and Orwellian. It's sad to see a profession that doesn't even know its own definition and standards.
They can be clueless, that doesn't mean the rest of us have to be complicit.
Oh, you don't know the story how Ukraine constantly blames Russia for striking civilians by repurposed S-300 missiles!
I bet this is the reason they are still in denial about the Poland incident. Because it breaks the legend and points to the real cause: issues with the missiles they launched. Meanwhile there is a constant flow of videos where Ukraine's S-300 missiles fly into land.
I’ve even seen it claimed in the past few months that Russia was, at points, the number 1 supplier of Ukraine in terms of equipment due to how much they left behind. [1]
If you’re interested in this topic and have some time, I’d recommend https://youtu.be/sNLTE75B0Os
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-new-offensive-is-fuele...
The current signals (UKR having low artillery stocks and US and other NATO countries inability to provide more, with Russians stocks also apparently low) have reminded me of 1915 in the First Big Mistake, when everyone had used up their prewar stocks of artillery shells, and waited to bring the factories online to make vastly more of them- the build-up to the mega-deaths at Verdun and the Somme. Hopefully we won't see that level of death in this war.
[1] https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-...
[2] https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/shell-155mm-how-he-l15
Also, the most important aspect of any enterprise, is the human. These folks trained for years, on Russian kit, and know it backwards and forwards.
The WMD story was clear, wilful duplicity and nothing more.
Generally this is the standard playbook. “Look my <hand waived definition of enemy> is fallible once, so must always be fallible when criticizing me , but they’re trustworthy when it’s good stuff”
This isn’t to excuse the AP. They really messed up, but Elon hamming it up is his usual disingenuous self.
Seems that maybe should a case arise where a government official lies in a way that is consistent with getting the public to support military action, they are not a "source" and deserve no protection whatsoever. They should go from feeding the false story to being the true story in short order. Is that nuts? What am I missing? These kinds of liars will avoid speaking to your publication in the future and that's a bad thing? Something more?
Imagine you work at $INTEL_AGENCY, and you truly believe that a missile was fired from Russia. That info came across your desk from two separate analysts or trusted sources or whatever. You leak this to a reporter. Then it turns out that your info was wrong and the reporter outs you as the source.
Will anyone ever be a source under these circumstances? Even if they're acting in good faith? No. Not worth he risk of destroying your career or even your freedom.
If I'm a reporter, I will put this name in my own "Brady" list of untrustworthy sources, but I won't make all future sources wary of me by outing them.
Is there really no way to balance "destroy all sourcing for other news" with "not be a patsy for WMD style propaganda?"
You should be terrified of doing that if that's what you're doing. Seems like right now those pushing such lies have nothing whatsoever at stake. There is no reckoning at all when it comes out.
Is that the way it should be?
As other commenters have suggested, this seems like an editorial failure in the rush to say "FIRST!" and severely damages the AP's reputation even with their retraction and response.
I hate to imply that this isn't the first time, since I don't have the resources or time machines to back myself up, but I don't think this is the first time AP (or Reuters) has done this. Just maybe the most visible and recent.
At risk of flame baiting, I am curious whether this retraction and correction will be taken into account when discussing the veracity of speeches given by former/potentially future political figures; per CNN:
> Missile landing in Poland > > Trump claimed Tuesday that a missile that was “sent in probably by Russia” landed 50 miles into Poland. “People are going absolutely wild and crazy and they’re not happy,” Trump said from Mar-a-Lago. > > Facts First: This claim is false. While Poland said a Russian-made missile did land in their territory Tuesday, killing two Polish citizens, the explosion happened about four miles west from the Ukrainian border. > > Additionally, it remains unclear where the missile was fired from, and why it fell in Poland.
At the time, like many of us, Trump relied on the AP's reporting of the facts. Will he be blamed for "lying" long after? My guess is yes.
As of right now, the Polish investigation is ongoing and it's never actually been confirmed that it's a Ukrainian missile. But the story's been buried.
So was the AP source not vetted and did the journalist screw up or did officials change the narrative for political reasons?
The US has not said anything more definitive than it was "probably" a Ukrainian missile...
As for the reporter being fired, feels like a scapegoating...
We have to acknowledge that there is a very real incentive for NATO to spike an attribution of Russian military missile on NATO in order to prevent escalation by popular demand.
High level military officials and select diplomats will be the ones with first hand info and the ability to decide the geopolitical move on what is sent to the news.
These are the people who are writing world-changing news everyday.
And the worst part is they even mention "Will this trigger article 5?". So they know just how big the implications of the story are but decide to run it because "US intelligence [via unnamed source] can't be wrong!".
And these are the same organizations that rail again "disinformation".
I now wonder if pre-internet news was as prone to these kind of mistakes since it took so much longer to publish news (thereby giving sources more time to confirm things).
In 1948, for example, the Chicago Tribune assumed Truman would lose the election and published it as fact on the front page in order to make their print deadline.
For a filmic example of the process of holding presses and then going with the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBXuyRXNIHE&t=1s
Named officials, such as Presidents and Secretaries of State, get us into wars through misapplication of evidence and in some cases creation of evidence. These doomsday reporters and editors are nothing more than squabbling hacks, using third hand stories from second hand reporters that are then published by third party editors.
I was in shock when I read, "I can't imagine a US intelligence official would be wrong on this." This thread contained people who should all have been fired, except for the person who was fired. Either that or pay for them to attend remedial journalism school.
The road to hell is paved with good itentions, but your guides on that road are AP editors.
There was an editorial failure, certainly, but in a rapidly changing situation due to a misunderstanding of the evidence given by a vetted source (such sources are seldom named even internally). Don't forget five or six nations were "squabbling" over the origin and nature of these missiles for days afterwards. Russian missiles did hit Poland, but they were Russian-made, not Russian-launched. It's not hard to imagine how easily this message could be muddled somewhere between Lviv and New York.
The person saying US intel was unlikely to be wrong was not evincing a blind trust in government but expressing that a vetted source was unlikely to volunteer information of this nature, in this situation, that was inaccurate, given that Poland had essentially confirmed there was a crisis event unfolding.
It was not a third hand story (US intel official claimed direct knowledge), reporters are not second hand (they interpret, contextualize, and synthesize) and editors are not third party (they are an integral part of the news process).
News organizations are under immense pressure from every quarter. It is very easy to pick apart the process in retrospect and suggest they should have distrusted a trusted source or questioned the somewhat ambiguous wording of the message from the reporter. News, and reporting about war especially, is complex and messy - remember this all took place within 9 minutes.
That does not make these people "doomsday reporters," "hacks," or that they need to be fired and attend remedial journalism school. It was an honest mistake not unique to virtual newsrooms but exacerbated by them. They retracted the story when it was clear that the intel their source provided was mistaken, fired the reporter for, I would guess, failing to communicate and handle the news properly, and likely chastised the editors for erring too far on the side of shipping the news.
Sorry for this long comment, I just completely disagree with your assessment.
It was not a third hand story (US intel official claimed direct knowledge),
reporters are not second hand (they interpret, contextualize, and synthesize)
and editors are not third party (they are an integral part of the news
process).
Your parenthetical on the direct knowledge is wrong. Direct knowledge was not stated anywhere. That is your spin or second-hand version of what was written in the slack thread, which was at least second hand derivative of the missile strikes.
You're assuming that journalism school is teaching things that are preventing this from happening.
The initial few hours after the explosion were chaotic; Poland did hold a national security committee (BBN) meeting and talked about triggering an Article 4 consultation, both of which were consonant with a belief that the missile was a Russian offensive missile that went awry. It's very possible, indeed likely, that a national security source, possibly within NATO/ACO/SHAPE, jumped the gun (so to speak) based on Polish sources; what we do know is that as ISR data came in, the USG itself (including Biden and SecDef) was officially reticent to affix blame until they were able to pinpoint the explosion as coming from Ukraine air defense.
As you say, there was a failure in the editorial process -- LaPorta passed along a tip from a source, Karam made the call to go with the story based entirely on that source. For the AP to go after a journo who didn't even write the story, and then say that they don't intend to even dig into the editorial failures, is unconscionable.
The thundering herds of groupthink and Tragedy of the Commons ensue.
This is how all the news is handled. It's not an isolated incident. If reporters are bad at handling a situation like this, they must be bad at handling other situations too. And the so-called fact-checkers base their information on stuff like this.