Monday, December 14, 2009

AP Assigns 11 "Fact-Checkers" For Palin’s Book, 5 For ClimateGate Emails

The Associated Press (AP) assigned 11 "Fact-Checkers" to Palin’s book and five to the ClimateGate emails; and there is some question about if one of them should have been assigned given a personal relationship (both via).

The AP is going to have somewhat of public relations nightmare over this. The 11 "Fact-Checkers" for Palin's book is going to be a benchmark. At least in the near term, everything they 'fact check' is going to be measured against what they did with Palin. The real problem comes in because Palin's book was not seen as something that needed almost a dozen people to check over from the same organization; a notion boosted by their lack of findings. The AP's overkill on Palin will make other investigations seem 'softball' by comparison, rightly bring up questions of partisanship and bias. There are really only two ways to get out of the situation, assign a dozen 'checkers' to everything or admit they were wrong with Palin. They do not have enough resources to assign a dozen people to everything, and admitting they were wrong with Palin would open up a can of worms they want to avoid. That means they are effectively stuck, and future investigations will have a cloud hanging over them with some low hanging fruit for critics.

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