Apparently, those employed as political reporters at the Associated Press never have to acknowledge the existence of their errors, let alone say they're sorry. They're also free to make major changes and corrections to the text of previously-filed reports without disclosing what they did to readers.
The AP's reporting on the fight John Lewis picked with Donald Trump — and yes, Lewis started it by saying he won't attend Trump's inauguration and by questioning the legitimacy of Trump's general election victory — typifies the wire service's total lack of, or even apparent interest in, accountability.
The First Reports
On Saturday, following up on Kevin Freking's Friday coverage of Lewis's original statement, the AP's Steve Peoples predictably made his story about how "Trump unleashes Twitter attack against civil rights legend." Despite the headline, Trump was reacting to Lewis's announcement that he wouldn't attend the inauguration because he doesn't "see this president-elect as a legitimate president." (The press still treats any conservative or Republican who dares to fight back against smears as the attacker, regardless of the circumstances.)
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In his dispatch, Peoples wrongly reported that Lewis's absence from the inauguration "would mark the first time he had skipped an inauguration since joining Congress three decades ago." Peoples didn't even write that this is what Lewis said; he presented it as an established fact.
That sentence is still present, uncorrected, in Peoples' report, even though it is now widely known that Lewis boycotted George W. Bush's first inauguration in 2001. The AP's stated News Values demand that "When mistakes are made, they must be corrected – fully, quickly and ungrudgingly." This was a mistake, and it hasn't been corrected in five days.
January 17, 9:54 a.m.
As seen in a Tuesday NewsBusters post, AP's unbylined coverage of the Lewis-Trump dustup on Tuesday morning at 9:54 a.m. (since updated, but saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), still failed to correct Peoples' original error. This report made it appear that AP was basing its "first time" claim on what Lewis said, though it could still be interpreted as a direct statement of a supposedly established fact (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Lewis said last week that he would not attend Trump's swearing-in, marking the first time he had skipped an inauguration since joining Congress three decades ago.
AP presented this sentence to readers despite the fact that several center-right outlets had shown a full day ago that Lewis did not attend the 2001 inauguration.
That 9:54 a.m. report also introduced a new error, namely the claim that all Democrats attended the Bush 43 inauguration:
While many Democrats were furious with the outcome of the drawn out 2000 election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore after recounts and a Supreme Court ruling, they attended Bush's inauguration as the nation's 43rd president.
Reasonable readers would take the bolded sentence to mean that every Democratic congressperson and senator was there.
Even ignoring Lewis, that's not true, as the Washington Examiner reported on Monday:
Lewis and (Barbara) Lee (D-Ca.), along with some other Democratic lawmakers at the time, also boycotted to make a point when President George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001.
Reports found elsewhere indicate that Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) also did not attend. The AP itself reported on January 16, 2001 that Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) would be "skipping" the 2001 inauguration. In that dispatch, headlined "Many Democratic lawmakers to attend Bush inaugural," the wire service disclosed that "Some Democrats are staying away," a circumstance confirmed after the fact in a January 21, 2001 Washington Post report which noted the absence of "some" of Texas Congressman Martin Frost's Democratic colleagues. That Post report also mentioned that "Some members of the Black Caucus decided to boycott Inauguration Day."
January 17, 11:02 a.m.
Andrew Taylor's update of the 9:54 a.m. report, time-stamped at 11:02 (since revised; saved here) celebrated the fact that "The number who initially said they would skip the event has increased after Trump lashed out at Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., on Saturday for challenging his legitimacy to be the next president."
Taylor finally acknowledged that the claim that this year would mark Lewis's first absence from a presidential inauguration as a congressman was false, but framed it, not as a lie or even an oversight, but as something Lewis "confirmed" as a result of a Trump tweet:
Trump struck again Tuesday morning with a tweet that noted that Lewis had claim (sic) that Trump's inauguration would be the first he will have missed since coming to Congress in 1987. "WRONG (or lie)!" Trump tweeted, saying Lewis had skipped George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001.
Lewis' office on Tuesday confirmed that the civil rights icon had missed Bush's swearing in.
"His absence at that time was also a form of dissent," said spokeswoman Brenda Jones. "He did not believe the outcome of that election, including the controversies around the results in Florida and the unprecedented intervention of the US Supreme Court, reflected a free, fair and open democratic process."
As I noted yesterday, and as has now effectively been confirmed by Lewis's spokesperson with her characterization of his 2001 absence as a noble "form of dissent": "It hardly seems likely that Lewis ... could somehow have forgotten his boycott 16 years ago." In other words, the default assumption has to be that Lewis lied to Chuck Todd when he claimed that his absence from Trump's inauguration will be his first.
Taylor also revised the AP's false claim that all Democrats attended Bush's 2001 inaugural in the following absurd sentence:
While many Democrats were furious with the outcome of the drawn out 2000 election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore after recounts and a Supreme Court ruling, they generally attended Bush's inauguration as the nation's 43rd president.
How does one "generally" attend an event, Andrew? It appears that Taylor was trying to avoid mentioning that any Democrat boycotted the event, or even that any of them, as the AP itself reported in 2001, "stayed away." But that's what happened.
January 17, 3:11 p.m.
Taylor's update four hours later (still present at AP as of when this post was prepared, but also saved here) moved the celebration of the number of boycotters into its headline ("Nearly 50 House Democrats vow to boycott Trump inauguration"), but did note that "none of the Senate Democrats said they'll skip the inauguration."
Both the de facto cover-up of Lewis's false "It will be the first one I miss" statement as something he merely "confirmed," and the deliberately vague claim that Democrats "generally attended Bush's inauguration," are still present.
Absent from AP's reporting in all of this is Democrats' long history of boycotting Republican inaugurations.
As Daniel Greenfield noted at FrontPage.com on Monday:
(referring to the aforementioned January 2001 Washington Post story) "(In) 1985, Democrats were so demoralized by Reagan's reelection that some thought they'd never return to power. Some Democrats boycotted the swearing-in ceremony."
(referring to a CBS News compilation of inauguration history through 2001) 80 Congressmen boycotted the inaugural ceremonies as Nixon entered his second term.
Imagine that. The AP and Andrew Taylor want readers to believe that the Trump boycott is something unique in U.S. history, when it's really the same old sore-loser posturing we've seen for over 40 years.
Despite the "News Values" mentioned earlier, there is no indication at its Corrections page or anywhere else that the AP's early reporting about John Lewis's boycott of Trump's nomination being his first was false, or that several other Democrats proactively boycotted Bush 43's inauguration.
Based on its shoddy, secretive and clearly agenda-driven handling of the Lewis-Trump episode AP's alleged "News Values" appear to be nothing but window dressing.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
