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Comment by ncallaway | Hacker News Reader

Frankly, this seems like an editorial mistake not a journalists mistake.

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.

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Do people often say when reporting on wars: Chinese AK-47s killed 20 civilians in Afghanistan, or do they say 10 Isis fighters fired AK-47s killing twenty civilians in Kabul?

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?

Now that you mention it though this should be stated every time. Certainly not instead of, but in addition yes.

It's academic yes, but in a murder investigation you want to know who had the gun and pulled the trigger not so much what make it was. For evidentiary purposes, yes, you want to know what exact gun it was and who manufactured it, but that's not at all the point of a murder trial. you want to know who the perp was.

War weapons are not really like murder weapons in this sense. If you want to stick with that metaphor, the country of manufacture here is more like the friend who bought the gun for the murderer. That sort of relationship is very relevant in a trial.

I don't recall reporters customarily mentioning the country of origin/manufacture of weaponry unless it was germane to the discussion.

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.

You will be surprised how many times in the news about those missiles they were specifically called Russian-made/produced.

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.

Given the vintage I expect they are Soviet missiles —though the actual factory of these unlike Anyonov were/are in the Moscow general area.

Some factories were in Ukraine, the factory even did some stuff for S-300 after USSR broke.

https://uk-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%96%D1%83%...

I get what you’re saying but also larger weapon systems often get referred to by their country of origin. Reason being is threat labeling/studying I think in the face of weapon sales. “Russian vs American artillery” gets eval’d a lot without referring to Russian and American soldiers, for example. “Iranian drones in Ukraine.” And so on. If the person quoted is from that background, easy to see this happening. It’s not a hard and fast rule but I don’t see as much justifiable outrage as you do.

Or an American Stinger missile shoots down an American Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-ta...

> "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)."

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 think if the reporter knew the missiles were fired by Ukrainian forces but manufactured by Russia, then he's ultimately responsible for…

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.

> 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).

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

Not to mention all of the American munitions raining down all over the world.

> By that interpretation both sides of war in ukraine are russian

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.

So if a Boeing plane is shot down in Iran, it would make sense to say "Iranians shoot down American plane"? During the Iran/Iraq war would have made sense to say "American missiles hit American planes in Iraq"?

> it would make sense to say "Iranians shoot down American plane"?

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.

Would it make sense for the AP to report that? No, of course not.

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.

That seems likely, but you still don't let the reporter off the hook. "Technically correct by one interpretation" isn't the standard for journalistic sourcing. He needed another source or more context (just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story) and didn't get one.

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.

> just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story

I understand why "Russia fires on Poland" is news.

Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

> Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

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.

And it’s not impossible to dream up a world where that kind of mistake would actually get Article 5 moving.

Ukraine is still insisting that they didn't fire the missile. It's not an oversight or a misinterpretation.

Ukraine should know not from AP whose missile it was, but they are still in denial, can you imagine?

Two main reasons

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.

> Russia launching on Poland could have been intentional.

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.

If you replace "Russia" with "Putin" it's possible that he would rather end the world than lose in Ukraine. And it's possible that he would need to generate the escalation to justify ordering the ICBMs to fly, otherwise the commanders might decline.

There's a celebrity Putin created by propaganda who is a rabid foaming maniac, and there's the real Putin, who hasn't ever seemed particularly irrational, or even overly adventurous. There's also a war with Russia, a whole country, that a lot of people have sought to reduce to Putin, but as adults we don't have to pretend that Russia is an appendage to a single great man's will.

The real Putin isn't irrational, but he is fairly adventurous, launching wars for territory against smaller neighbors quite a bit (I think 5 times now.) But there is also the "Putin has terminal cancer" rumor, where he wants to reassemble Greater Russia or blow up the world trying, as he's running out of chances to shoot his shot.

Probably because Ukraine didn't fire on Poland they fired on armament launched by Russia.

> Why is "Ukraine fires on Poland, blames Russia" not news?

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.

Because there's no intentionality involved, and it's unlikely to escalate into a military conflict. "Ukraine fires an S-300 at a Russian missile but it misses and kills a couple people in Poland" is a tragic accident, probably newsworthy, but not in the same way as Russia or Ukraine deliberately launching missiles into Poland would.

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.

> . He needed another source or more context

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.

That's not how I read the linked story? That particular Slack message happened to coincide with his doctor's appointment, but the article that printed had his byline on it. Surely he wrote it, or at the very least dictated it to an editor who put it in the system. No one publishes stories on the wire based on a two-message slack thread sent from the doctor's office!

Unfortunately, and unless AP releases something further in the way of explaining this, we don’t actually know if that’s what happened.

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...

What article with his byline? It looks like someone else wrote the news alert that's discussed in the linked article.

That's exactly what it looks like happened, though!

He posts the received tip at 1:32, mentions his doctors appt at 1:38. Lisa says sending alert at 1:40.

You can see the alert here[0], it does not have any byline. If you view the source of the page it has a "timestamp" like this:

<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-...

> No one publishes stories on the wire based on a two-message slack thread sent from the doctor's office!

Seems like an optimistic assumption.

It started with commonplace entry level potential story journalism.

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.

Lisa: "Can we report from that or do we need confirmation from another source".

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.

Not to sound like a wise-ass but by defintion there is no such thing as bad journalism. If you're doing "bad journalism" you're doing journalism at all.

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.

https://kottke.org/20/01/jim-lehrers-rules-of-journalism-1

> He needed another source or more context (just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story) and didn't get one.

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

>just an identification of these as AA missiles would have been enough to kill the story

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.

Can anybody knowledgeable tell me why Ukraine would have old-ass Soviet missiles left? I would naïvely assume that old munitions would be long gone (aren't we like 8 months in?) and replaced with shiny US stuff.

I think that they want to get rid of their old stuff (and the best way to do that, is throw it at the Russians). Maybe those missiles were protecting something of a lower priority, than the "shiny" kit.

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.

I would assume that they had gotten rid of their old stuff 7 months ago.

It would have been highly unusual for the Ukrainian military to have depleted their entire anti-air arsenal in April, given that, at the time, they weren't receiving Western high-altitude anti-air systems. (Nor were they facing a persistent campaign by Russian warplanes deep behind the front line, since by that point the Russian air force had largely given up on straying deep into Ukraine.)

RU didn’t really use its airforce to deplete UA’s AA missiles (S-300 can’t lock on low altitude cruise missile). Also because UA was a buffer between NATO and other Soviet territory it inherited a lot of AA missiles (thousands, maybe lower 10s of thousands).

Ukraine has captured a lot of Russian equipment during the recent Russian retreats.

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...

I wonder if either Soviet or US export arms include remote disable and/or Identification, friend or foe (IFF) systems preventing attacks on "friendly-to-exporter" targets.

The location might be a factor. Munitions that have been stockpiled in the western part of the country are likely not being expended at nearly the rate that they are in other parts.

This didn't occur to me at all. Makes a lot of sense.

Look at the globe. It was the main part of USSR defense against West offensive. The only country which had a comparable amount of defensive systems is Poland.

While there are simple US weapons that have been provided (things like TOW missiles, M777 howitzers, etc.) and a small handful of complex ones (the famous HIMARS) many of the weapons provided have actually been of Soviet manufacture- since the Ukrainians already know how to take care of and use them, it is easier to give them Polish MiG-29's that the Ukrainian Air Force already can operate than to spend months training everyone on how to take care of a F-16. (Though in the end, I don't believe the Poles ended up giving any MiGs to the UAF, that was the central topic of negotiations for some time.)

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.

The ammo makers have already increased production. There are many sources for 155mm shells. Nammo [1] BAE Systems.[2] Dezamet [3] General Dynamics [4]. Those are somewhat generic. The real shortages are in the fancier guided stuff. Most of which is decades-old technology and could be built today from common smartphone parts.

[1] https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-...

[2] https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/shell-155mm-how-he-l15

[3] https://dezamet.com.pl/155mm,26,en.html

[4] https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/artillery/

More likely this was akin to the WMD reports and Iraq. There's a conclusion and and information that supports it is fast tracked and not given due diligence. Then the retraction and correction is far more muted. This isn't a bug, it's a feature of modern media propaganda.

The WMD reports were obviously false at the time and the people peddling those lies clearly understood what they were doing. That wasn't a case of something being missed in the heat of the moment and discovered later - tens of millions of people took to the streets in protest and all of them were making it VERY clear that they knew the WMD story wasn't true right at the time it was first brought up.

The WMD story was clear, wilful duplicity and nothing more.

This is an absurd interpretation.

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