Talk:Associated Press

Date Correction

The article states that asap was cancelled in October of 2007 in the past tense. There are either plans to cancel it in the future (in which case it should be in the future tense) or the date of the cancellation is incorrect. GCNM 15:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Fournier paragraph under Controversy Section describes no controversy other than being a conservative

No specific controversy was described in the part of the section describing fornier. Being a conservative does not make one controversial.

Sean7phil (talk) 18:32, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

John Solomon controversy

Is it me or does this section read like pre-election invective? Poorly sourced (e.g. blogs), highly-POV. The election is over, is this section really needed? At the very least is should be NPOV-ed and more reliably sourced. Ronnotel 18:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

AP officially responded[1] to TPM and Media Matters. So they obviously thought it was notable. Not sure what the point is of your "the election is over" bit; if it was encyclopedic before Nov. 7, I would think it is still encyclopedic now. The blogs in question (TPM, Media Matters, The American Prospect) are all professional outfits not typical blogs: they have editorial oversight, bylines (i.e. they are not anonymous), etc. so they do meet the criteria of WP:RS. As for "highly-POV", it would be helpful if you gave an example. Crust 19:27, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

By the way, in which direction do you see the POV? I was assuming you're saying the POV is against the AP, but I thought I would confirm. Note e.g. this article speaks of "a pair of misleading articles by John Solomon of the Associated Press" where the Harry Reid article uses the blunter "John Solomon of the Associated Press erroneously reported". (Then again, perhaps you think the Reid article is POV also?) Crust 19:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Potential POV issues with this section include:

• cites from only POV sources (i.e. self-described left-leaning blogs)
• undue weight - blogs POV discussed in detail, AP's defense mentioned in passing
• bias in tone - e.g. Solomon's work labeled as mis-leading, AP reply described as containing serious factual errors without adequate supporting evidence.
• non-encyclopedic - article appears to use alleged political leanings of one reporter to indict entire organization - why is this relevant?

Ronnotel 03:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"Misleading" is documented by three external links and as I noted earlier the Reid article simply describes the reporting as erroneous (which needless to say, is a stronger statement). That certainly seems to me like adequate supporting evidence. True, we don't go into the specifics of the issues with those two articles, and perhaps we should, but you're already complaining about undue weight. As for "factual errors" (I've deleted "serious" as that is arguably a judgement call / POV), again that is documented with an external link. How would you prefer to see it? We could get into the details in the article -- they're pretty black and white. One possibility is to separate off this section as a new article (similar to the Jamil Hussein controversy) and include a brief summary sentence here.

As for "one reporter", I find this line of argument as mystifying as your previous argument that maybe this was notable before the election, but is no longer. One can equally say Jamil Hussein is "one source", but I don't see how that argument is relevant either. In both cases, AP has put its imprimatur on the reporting and criticisms of the reporting are also criticisms of AP. (Or maybe you want to argue the Jamil Hussein controversy is also non-notable / non-encyclopedic?) Crust 16:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Crust, please don't remove POV tag - policy indicates POV remains in place while discussion is on-going. The tag alerts others who may be able to help reach consensus. We obviously disagree - I think we should allow others to comment. Ronnotel 16:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ronnotel, I would be grateful if you could state your issues in more detail and/or edit the section to correct what you see as POV / potential POV.Crust 17:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Misleading & factual errors are exceptional claims and require exceptional sources - more than three partisan blogs which are specifically discouraged under WP:RS - they don't belong here.
• I don't believe the section was ever encyclopedic - my comment about the election was snark-ladden. This essentially boils down to "three partisan blogs disagreed with a damaging story about Harry Reid" - I don't see why this is important. I would say the same about an article about Bush.
• The Jamil Hussein controversy is based on reaction from a foreign government and the U.S. military and touches on a potentially large body of work - I don't see the comparison.

However, if you want to split this into a separate article then go ahead. Ronnotel 17:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Silence interpreted as consent. Ronnotel 03:45, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

missing paragraph

It looks like there used to be something between the third and fourth paragraphs. The fourth begins

It has also posed a threat to AP's financial structure. On April 18, 2005, at its annual meeting,

but it isn't clear what "it" is referring to. Sevesteen 23:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing it out; I reinstated the paragraph deleted with this edit. -- Jim Douglas ^(talk) _(contribs) 00:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Lead

The lead is fairly long for the size of the actual article. I haven't looked it over fully but there also might be events in the lead not covered in the article. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the body of the article. Quadzilla99 14:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Inverted pyramid vs. feature or narrative

The AP has a separate dept. for news features and narratives. Led by such greats as Bruce DeSilva, the department has cranked out good features and narratives for papers that want them for many years.

The article wants us to believe that such a straight-forward style is novelty or endangered species. Neither is the case.

As a journalist who assists in editing my paper's wire (AP only) content, I would say that the majority of ap articles and alerts are still written as news articles (inverted pyramid and related structures like hourglass) in the ap's own style. A lot of AP content is borrowed from smaller daily papers and other news outlets as part of the AP's service agreement with these organizations. The AP then has a limited control of exactley what style of story it picks up (of course editing to AP style and satisfaction is always completed before the work is sent to other outlets).

So, the segment in this article mentioning a switch is needless as well as nonfactual. The majority of the AP subscribers would have a much greater need for journalism in strict style anyway. Just contact a news collecter like Yahoo or Google and see what kinds of stories they carry.

I think we need to see proof of this switch and impact of the bottom line. Please remove until such evidence is presented.

-- newsn —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.68.20.228 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

right wing bias

do yous think ap has a right wing bias? i think it does.

I don't think AP has so much a right wing bias as a progressively irritating habit of publishing unvarifiable "facts". There is not an article written these days that does not have a disclaimer that the individuals providing information are doing it on a condition of anynomity because they are not authorized to or the information is "classified". This is why people like Karl Rove get away with the kind of things they do.

I can tell you that information that cannot be independently verified is absolutely worthless. We all complain about how poor our performance as a nation and our Government has become. It is largely because we all swallow these undocumented and unvarifiable sources as gospel. We've become a country of fatted cattle that drink from the manure fed streams that AP and the other news outlets have become. Watch the news folks, these idiots are down to interviewing each others reporters to cross check the same source. It's idiotic and it's our fault. Take some responsibility. Vote and don't tolerate the unproffesional newsreporting that we see today. News is not entertainment. It's the information that you need to make informed decisions with.

Don't let "fact" be dictated by ratings. 74.0.180.66 17:45, 12 July 2007 (UTC)Concerned in CA

- Reuters has a controversy/criticism section on their page, it seems only valid to create one for the AP page as well, seeing as the "right wing bias" is something that is discussable at the very least. Perhaps something about how the AP and other major news corporations have been strong influences of globalizing information and providing little room for dissenting opinion and points of view, etc. Its a lot to ask but it seems only fair to call out the AP in a similar fashion that Reuters has. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.20.115.195 (talk) 07:08, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

What a joke, the AP has a substantial left wing bias and is constantly trying to push it's kookery on the rest of us normal folks. ;) --71.232.157.145 (talk) 13:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

If the controversy/bias section in the Reuters and CNN pages are appropriete, then what is needed here is a collection of quotes on the bias of AP. If there are quotable people saying AP is right wing/left wing then the fact that they said such things should be included here. I'm doing a media studies course in college and would greatly appreciate anybody's contribution to this part. Thank you!

Left, Right, After reading this I think you're all nuts. Myraedison (talk) 02:26, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

fuck yes it does

Title

Is it Associated Press or The Associated Press? What is the company's legal name? Quadzilla99 17:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

>Definitely it's The Associated Press. The AP's official Web site displays the title of the page as to be The Associated Press, and in stories, sources often 'told The Associated Press.' Warwithwords (talk) 06:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The Associated Press exists as a redirect to this article. It wouldn't be too hard to swap them.

But they are hardly consistent about it. It is, after all, usually called AP and not TAP. Their Web site has Associated Press rather than The Associated Press prominently displayed across its home page. They have published books of articles which are credited to "Associated Press Staff" not "The Associated Press Staff." Similarly, the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2005 went to "Associated Press Staff" not "The Associated Press Staff" [2] - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I might add we refer to America as the United States, but the Wikipedia article is titled "United States." So I think we should leave this title unchanged. 71.11.215.216 (talk) 15:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Paris Hilton Hoax

Some apologist for the AP deleted this a "random" mishap and deleted the post. It was actually a national news story and displayed a serious lapse in journalistic standards. it was widely reported as it got over 86,000 hits on Yahoo [3] , including major articles on the Huffington Post and Power Line.

"Apologist" - well, glad to see you're approaching this in the mindset of assume good faith. If you think a celebrity goof-up is a "serious lapse in journalistic standards" that deserves prominent mention, then I think your priorities might be slightly out of whack. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:25, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Largest?

There is no source that says it is the largest news organization in the world. And even if there was, it would probably be an exaggeration. Doesn't BBC have the biggest audience anyway? Contralya (talk) 23:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Controversies section

I created a new "Controversies" section out of "Current events", as I had a "scandal" to move in from United States journalism scandals. I don't know if this is best for the article - but the story needed to be mentioned here (if it is mentioned there - the only place on WP it was mentioned). I directly moved all the text, as, per an AfD, that longer-list "article" may be merged into the simpler list of linked scandal-titles here: List of United States journalism scandals. --Matt Lewis (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirecting AP back to this article

• AP was a disambiguation page flagged for clean-up, however after some consideration I converted it to a redirect to this page. For more info please see Talk:AP. Marchije (talk) 02:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Not a non-profit

The AP at large is not a non-profit organization. I have a confirmation e-mail I can provide, of their staff advising me that most people have the concept of the AP wrong, in that it is very much a for profit org. The status of this company needs to be changed on this article promptly. Please reply if you would like a screenshot of this e-mail.

Regards,

208.80.216.98 (talk) 19:23, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

He is right, how can an organization be non-profit if they posted an $18,528,000 income for 2005. If they are non-profit, there income for every year should be exactly $0.00 excluding donations. (The AP does not accept donations.)12.186.114.19 (talk) 21:36, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you're a little confused: non-profit doesn't mean non-income. They pay their reporters and editors and rent for offices, so they need income to cover that. They could be non-profit with a zillion-dollar income. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

DavidWBrooks is right that plenty of 'not-for-profits' actually do make an income, often on purpose. For clarity, profit is exactly what the term income means. Revenue covers salaries and rent. Income (also known as earnings, profit or surplus) is what is left after the bills have been paid, and a non-profit (not-for-profit) has to keep it as retained earnings, that is as a reserve or to invest in the business (computers, vehicles, real estate.)

The term 'non-profit' usually means 'not-for-profit', meaning that profit is permitted, as long as it is used properly.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 01:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Which ones?

The article states that "the AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States" but it gives no indication of which papers and stations these may be. I for one think it is relevant and important information and should be included in the article, or at least linked to. --76.202.226.195 (talk) 21:04, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

"As of 2005, the AP's news is published and republished by more than 1,700 newspapers, in addition to more than 5,000 television and radio broadcasters." ... that's a LOOOOONG list. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:54, 29 May 2008 (UTC)