aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

AP Truthiness

It seems AP got the story from Raw Story, but attributed it instead to “lesbian and gay advocacy groups.” Read the whole sad story at Huffington Post.

Raw Story then spoke with Jack Stokes, AP’s Director of Media Relations. Stokes took careful notes regarding our concerns and said he would investigate our claims. He found that the AP had, indeed, gotten our article from “human rights groups” but that it was AP policy not to credit blogs.

“It does turn out that we don’t give mentions to blogs when we’re researching our stories and when we’ve been given material by others such as in this case human rights groups that brought this stuff to us that we independently check,” Stokes said in a voicemail message.

Stokes elaborated Tuesday, saying the AP does give credit to blogs. He said the reason Raw Story wasn’t credited in the Mar. 14 article was because the bureau “hadn’t heard of” Raw Story, and because they had received the article from third-party groups. He said the agency would be issuing a statement, most likely later today.

“We do credit blogs that we know,” Stokes said. “We had no idea who you were.”

In the past, AP has given credit to such blogs as Instapundit and Pajamas Media. Raw Story has previously received credit from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, Roll Call, The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, MSNBC and Rolling Stone, though major media publications have repeatedly lifted the site’s work without attribution.

UPDATE: They did it at TPM too. Josh Marshall, “ripping off original reporting from blogs is clearly routine.”