The AP's Thursday train wreck
January 30, 2009 9:44 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Just in case you didn't follow these developments, as highlighted by MMA yesterday (here, here, and here), you really ought to take a minute and familiarize yourself with the details because they represent an almost a complete breakdown in journalism. The fact that the AP, one of the oldest and most respected news organizations, could produce such a shoddy product in the process of peddling phony GOP talking points really makes you wonder about where journalism stands these days.
The colossal embarrassment also highlighted the hand-to-mouth feeding that's going on in Washington, D.C. today as the GOP tries to undermine the Obama administration's stimulus packaged, and news orgs scramble to the first ones to air the often baseless claims, without bothering to confirm if they're accurate and without bothering to contact Democrats for comments.
Like we said, the AP suffered a complete journalism breakdown yesterday and to date, nobody at the news org has acknowledged the fiasco, or explained how so many newsroom rules were ignored.
UPDATE: In the comments below "James" raises interesting points about how, according to some Congressional reporters, Democratic offices in Congress are slow to respond to reporters' requests, whereas Republicans very quickly return calls. The point being, for reporters on continuous deadlines all day, getting information from Democrats can be maddeningly slow.
That's certainly a valid critique. (And frankly, it's one I experienced over the years as a reporter with Salon.) Obviously the more information that reporters have in a timely basis is better for everyone involved. But in this specific case of the AP train wreck, it's not an excuse because the AP in its first report never even indicated that it tried to contact any Democrats for comment. There was no indication the AP ever tried to determine if the GOP spin about the stimulus package was accurate. Also, the entire AP story was built around a single anonymous Republican source.
There's simply no reason why the AP published a story as incomplete and inaccurate as the one it posted on its wires yesterday.
"without bothering to confirm if they're accurate and without bothering to contact Democrats for comments."
A novel idea, and journalistically speaking, ethical.
But that does not buy you ad revenue nor does it get you click-throughs from Drudge's web site.
Maybe we DO need a newspaper bailout to help with these primitive survival only instincts.
I'm all for press accountability but there's an element here that is missing. The Dems in Congress have almost NO media management, and what they have is profoundly incompetent. I've been talking to a number of Congressional reporters about this problem. These guys are NOT hacks.
First, recognize that all reporters are working on a deadline. They are required to file (submit) *something* on their deadline. Wire reporters have to file 3-5 times per day -- newspaper reporters once or twice. Look, that's the job.
So the Dem side doesn't return calls for hours, and sometimes never. One reporter told me the following last Wednesday:
More from the same reporter:
He goes on to say:
That's a real problem on the Dem side. Another problem is the difference in how the press is accommodated. For example, Jim Manley is supposed to be the press flak for Harry Reid. But his actual job is to track the goings on. Harry Reid's office has no one available to the press to answer policy questions. The press flaks from Pelosi's office, including Brendan Daly, are either not knowledgable about policy or not authorized to speak about it.
In contrast, a reporter I talked to tells me that Boehner's press guy, Michael Steel, always drops what he is doing and calls back within 15 minutes, and is knowledgable and helpful, as are all of the GOP press flaks.
So, yeah, great, let's hold the press accountable, but I think the long term solution is to "help" the Dems in Congress to improve their media management. Working on that side of it would be a lot more constructive, it seems to me.
I know, I was just being a bit, well, snarky to some of our more frequent posters on here.
I do agree with you, Dems have had a media management problem for years (in general, and overall). Republicans have been using traditional media very well for a long time, but I would say on the electronic frontier, the democrats, and people who consider themselves democrats, are using these means better, and far more often.
The Dems have a faulty philosophical approach to the media. They expect the media to be arbiters of truth and justice and the American way. And that's just not how reality is, even if we all wish it were so. Reporters are in the business of writing stuff, within certain constraints, and they are bound by deadlines and standards about what is "newsy." Sure, they can be lazy and careless, they can be biased, and some just don't give a damn. They are every bit as diverse in their talent and output as any other group of people.
But it's a mistake to think they are going to be the arbiters of truth. It isn't going to happen and reporters are not interested in being arbiters of truth. They are interested in doing their job to their bosses satisfaction, just like anyone else.
The GOP understands this very well. That's why they are always ready with a helpful quote, a helpful source, helpful information,and forthcoming very quickly. ALL of their people accommodate the press. And that is how they mold the message to their liking. Howard Dean, with the DNC, understood this and crafted an effective media machine. That needs to be done in Washington.
Now, we can all sit here on comment threads and rant about the existential injustice of it all, or we can try to change the Dem culture of media management to be more effective. I'm in favor of doing the latter.
Excellent post, one of the most interesting I've read on the site.
Well, you make some good points in your update. What you want to know is, did the Dems push back on that atrocity, or not? Because, see, that's part of the failing of Dem media management, that there is no one designated to push back. My reporter friend tells me that the GOP side is quick and very aggressive in their feedback, while many times there is *no* Dem pushback on stories like this.
Look, I'm not defending the AP here. I'm just pointing out that it might be constructive to try to DO something about this stuff. We've been complaining about it for years, but there are actual structural problems with the Dem side that need improvement. It's great to do a lot of moralizing about what reporters should do or not do, or write or not write, but that just isn't solving the problem we have. And a lot of the problem we have is a structural weakness in the Dem message machine.
My reporter source also tells me that Howard Dean's message management was on a par with the RNC in quickness and aggressiveness. Maybe his NEXT job should be to coordinate the Democratic Congress message machine. Wouldn't that be more constructive than railing for years and years on end about the unfairness of it all, to no apparent effect? I'm just talking reality here. It is how it is.
AP does lack integrity in its reporting. It is fact that the AP had a reporter personally follwoing and writing about Alaska tax and pipeline items daily. Most published in Alaska and teh west. Funny, when Palin burst on the scene and the left needed to disparage her achievemments the AP ignores all the articles their own on-the-scene reporter filed and had some corporate hacks do a piece that is long on suposition and excruciatingly short on facts.
AP should be censored or at least admit when they are doing a hack job.
See the national story here
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-10-26-palin-pipeline_N.htm
See a few of teh stories written by thyeir on the ground reporter Steve Quinn, who surprisingly had no part in the trashing article nor does the hack job even mention any of the other AP stories run onthe subject. See a few of Steve's workk here:
http://alaskajournal.com/stories/072708/oil_20080727033.shtml
http://alaskajournal.com/stories/061108/leg_061108001.shtml
http://alaskajournal.com/stories/021908/loc_20080217015.shtml
http://www.adn.com/money/industries/oil/pipeline/story/210919.html
General notes: The terms of the bid were enshrined in legislation which passed 59-1 aggregate through both houses. Big oil chose to submit two non-conforming bids, which by terms of the legislation had to be rejected.
The supposed insider for TransCanada had no control over the bidding rules nor the winning selection. Steve knows all of this but the AP didn't want the real story - made up story got them front page on almost every newspaper and website!
The article is below with my comments in [] and italics.
Gov. Sarah Palin's signature accomplishment — a contract [WRONG: no contract issued. A license was awarded under a legislative defined process called AGIA] to build a 1,715-mile pipeline [WRONG – Alaska license only covers the piece in the state of Alaska and not the Canadian piece] to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 [WRONG – to the middle of Alberta] — emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows.Beginning at the Republican National Convention in August, the McCain-Palin ticket has touted the pipeline as an example of how it would help America achieve energy independence.Despite Palin's boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp. [WRONG – her team did not craft the terms. The terms were embedded in legislation which the Alaska House and Senate passed by a combined vote of 59 to 1. if it was biased to favor a few companies it is because the legislation required a company with a sufficient balance sheet to perform the ultimate building of a pipeline. It would have been stupid to allow every mom-and-pop shop to bid. ] And contrary to the ballyhoo, there's no guarantee [ Only death and taxes] the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away, as TransCanada must first overcome major financial and regulatory hurdles [What Trans Canada must undergo is the normal regulatory process every pipeline in America must go through at FERC].In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:_Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group — the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas. [WRONG – the previous governor negotiated behind closed doors with the oil companies and legislative testimony will show that most estimate the state would have given away over $10billion in incentives with nothing in return. The terms within AGIA that the producers did not like mainly focused on preventing the producers from controlling access to the pipeline and stifling competition as they did with the Alaskan oil pipeline – see many court records that address producer abuse in TAPS]_Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada. [Clearly do not know anything here]_The leader [WRONG – in name maybe but is was really led by two Commissioners so oversight existed] of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked [FIVE years prior for a period of months] on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead [Well, I guess if only counts also as lead this is correct – a bit of hyperbole here.] private lobbyist on the pipeline deal. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team. [WRONG – not one consultant was a former Trans Canada executive. The former pipeline executive was from Colorado Interstae Gas]_Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million. [TRUE – as noted above the previous ‘deal’ was not concluded because of corrupt dealings of the previous administration. 7 now serving jail terms. So an open bid process defined by the legislature was followed and that process included state participation as an inducement to keep working even though the producers would do all they could to stifle the deal.]."Governor Palin held firmly to her fundamental belief that Alaska could best serve Alaskans and the nation's interests by pursuing a competitive approach to building a natural gas pipeline," said McCain-Palin spokesman Taylor Griffin. "There was an open and transparent process that subjected the decision to extensive public scrutiny and due diligence." [Over 3000 pages of analysis of the project and the various bids delivered to the public 90 days in advance of the ultimate vote.]There were never more than a few players that could execute such a complex undertaking — at least a million tons of steel stretching across some of Earth's most hostile and remote terrain.TransCanada estimates it will cost $26 billion; Palin's consultants estimate nearly $40 billion. [one is unescalted and the other is escalated]The pipeline would run from Alaska's North Slope to Alberta in Canada; secondary lines would take the gas to various points in the United States and Canada.Building such a pipeline had been a dream for decades. The rising cost and demand for energy injected new urgency into the proposal.When Palin was elected governor two years ago, she vowed to take on ExxonMobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP, the multinational energy companies that long dominated the state's biggest industry.Palin ousted fellow Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, who negotiated a secret pipeline deal with the "Big Three" energy companies. That deal went nowhere.The new governor tackled the pipeline issue with gusto, meeting with representatives from all sides and assembling her own team of experts to draw up terms.Palin invited bidders to submit applications and offered the multimillion-dollar subsidy. Members of her team say that without the incentive, it might not have received any bids for the risky undertaking.Palin's team was led by Marty Rutherford, a widely respected energy specialist and veteran of state government. Rutherford solidified her status when, in 2005, she joined an exodus of Department of Natural Resources staff who felt Murkowski was selling out to the oil giants.What the Palin administration neglected to mention in its announcement of Rutherford's appointment was that in 2003, Rutherford left public service and worked for 10 months at the Anchorage-based Jade North lobbying firm. There she did $40,200 worth of work for Foothills Pipe Lines Alaska, Inc., a subsidiary of TransCanada.Foothills Pipe Lines Alaska Inc. paid Rutherford for expertise on topics including state legislation and funding related to gas commercialization, according to her 2003 lobbyist registration statement.Palin has said she wasn't bothered by that past work because it had occurred several years before. But Rutherford wouldn't have passed her new boss' own standards: Under ethics reforms the governor pushed through, Rutherford would have had to wait a year to jump from government service to a lobbying firm.Rutherford also has downplayed her work for Foothills."I did a couple of projects for them, small projects," she told a state Senate committee examining the TransCanada bid earlier this year. While a partner, Rutherford said, she "realized that my heart was not in the private sector, it was in the public sector."At one point, Palin's pipeline team debated Rutherford's role, but concluded there was no problem, said Revenue Department Commissioner Pat Galvin, another team member.Patricia Bielawski, Rutherford's former partner at Jade North, spent last summer in Juneau, the state capital, serving as TransCanada's lead private lobbyist. While the Legislature debated — and ultimately approved — the TransCanada deal, Bielawski met with lawmakers and sat in on the public proceedings, several legislators said. [As did oil company lobbyists, stae interst lobbyiosts, LNG lobbyists, etc, etc.]Bielawski told AP that Rutherford never directly lobbied the Legislature for Foothills, and that Rutherford broke no rules.But others say it's a legitimate question.[YES, the producers as they try to scuttle the deal]"I'm not saying someone's getting paid off for a sweetheart contract, but it's very hard to ignore that this is your former partner and your former client standing there before you," said Republican Sen. Lyda Green, a Palin critic who in August voted against awarding TransCanada the license.Tony Palmer, the TransCanada vice president who leads the company's Alaska gas pipeline effort, rejects the suggestion that his company benefited."We have gained clearly no advantage from anything that Ms. Rutherford did for Foothills some five years ago on a very much unrelated topic," he said.Rutherford did not respond to interview requests. But McCain-Palin spokesman Griffin said Rutherford "had no decision-making role or authority," and contended that such matters were handled by others on the Palin pipeline team. [CORRECT – see note above about Commissiners Galvin and Irwin making all the calls]TransCanada also had a connection to the team hired by the Palin administration to analyze the bid. Patrick Anderson, a former TransCanada executive, served as an outside consultant. [WRONG – Never saw him, none of the expert reports on the web are authored by him, nor did he ever testify.]In January 2007, Palin spoke the first of at least two times to Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration's point person on energy issues, according to calendars obtained by the AP. Cheney's staff pressed the Palin administration to draw in the energy companies, said current and former state officials involved in those discussions.As the governor's approach unfolded in the spring of 2007, Palin said she saw problems if the firms that own the gas also owned the pipeline. They could manipulate the market or charge prohibitive fees to smaller exploration firms, discouraging competition. [TRUE – they did this on the oil pipeline. In fact I think a judge has recently ruled that they overcharged in the last few years about $3.5 billion Funny how all these facts are out there but none make it into the article to show how Palin is just being prudent]Several important requirements in the legislation were unpalatable to the big oil companies. In the talks under Murkowski, the firms asked that the rates for the gas production tax and royalties be fixed for 45 years; Palin refused to consider setting rates for that long. [TRUE – actually the previous deal for 45 years would not have been approved by the legislature as the Alaskan constitution prevents one legislature from binding future legislatures especially on revenue and budgets.]Under her process, pipeline firms had an advantage because they simply pass along taxes paid by oil and gas producers. [HYPERBOLE – as part of the FERC rate making process all pipelines are allowed to include in the rates they charge shippers compensation for taxes paid – no issue of distinction here.]Oil company officials warned lawmakers they wouldn't participate under those terms. Still, in a near unanimous vote, the Legislature passed the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act in May 2007, as generally written by Palin's pipeline team.Once the state issued its request for proposals on July 2, 2007, the level of communication between the government and potential bidders was supposed to decrease drastically. State lawyers advised public officials to keep their distance, and bidders were told to submit questions on a public website. [Because of the recent federal indictments]But Palin had conversations with executives at most of the major potential bidders during that period, according to her calendars, which indicate that the pipeline was the subject of the discussions, or that the conversations occurred immediately after a briefing with Palin's pipeline team.TransCanada's Palmer described communication with state officials as nonexistent.According to the governor's official schedule, however, Palin called TransCanada President and CEO Hal Kvisle on Aug. 8, 2007. Palmer said the call was to clarify the bidding process.Griffin said that in keeping with legal guidance, Palin never spoke in any of the meetings about the competitive bidding process.By the Nov. 30 submission deadline, there were five applications. But the state disqualified four for failing to satisfy the bill's requirements. [All fair and above board as the legislation contained OBJECTIVE as opposed to SUBJECTIVE criteria]That left TransCanada.The Canadian giant had been pursuing an Alaska pipeline since at least 2004, when the company negotiated a deal with Rutherford that the state ended up shelving. While the details remain confidential, six people familiar with the terms told the AP that TransCanada was willing to do the work then without the large state subsidy. In testimony this July before the state Senate, Rutherford described the 2004 deal as presenting different trade-offs.Others who reviewed the deal think much of the $500 million will be wasted money."Most definitely TransCanada got a sweetheart deal this time," said Republican Sen. Bert Stedman, who voted against the TransCanada license. "Where else could you get a $500 million reimbursement when you don't even have the financing to build the pipeline?"_James, excellent suggestion, but no, it isn't superior to "railing for years and years" about the particular inadequacies of the SCLM. It's called the media critique, and its one of the finest achivements of the liberal/progressive blogisphere, And its had an effect. Notenough as yet, but we need to keep on keeping on.
I think we need to let Democrats know how ineffective their silence, and even, more's the pity, many of their explanations are of their own policies. It can't be said enough that so far a genuine majority of Americans want a strong, bold, stimulus package. That the SCLM is well on its way to portraying the conflict as unpopular Democratic tax and spend policies vs Reganesque small government should be setting off alarm bells across congress.
One example, Russ Finegold, who is great on constitutional issuees was on MSNBC a couple of days ago to talk about the stimulus bill, which he hadn't read and about which he echoed right wing talking points about not wating any pork in there. On the other hand, Senator Webb was excellent. The worst of it is that too often Democrats don't explicitly take on Republican talking points and show how they are just plain false.
Right now, it's as if the media is triangulating, trying to create a narrative in which Obama is being betrayed by those lefty Democrats, and thus kept from truly reaching out to his natural allies, the Repblicans. And I have to say, that for a few days it looked like Obama was willing to let that happen. I've learned in watching him that one should never discount his patience, and I feel better that he isn't setting up too compromised a bill to do the job.
One last thought, it shouldn't be too surprising that Republicans have better press relations; many reasons for that but one of them is that the current Republican Party is not about governance, it is about propagandistic talking points, so that you have Boehner announcing Republicans have a plan that will create 6 million jobs more cheaply than Obama's 3-4 million, without even bothering to give one specific. Of course. Because it wasn't a plan, it was a talking point. That's always easier to defend than actual governance.
It is difficult for most people to fathom just how far gone the media is. The only long-term solution is to get more people to realize what the media is so that they can choose to make judgments based on more worthwhile sources.
Well, okay, you do it your way, and I'll try it my way. Good luck with your plan to get "everyone" to realize "what the media is" and to get all these people to "choose to make judgments based on more worthwhile sources." The two approaches aren't mutually exclusive. I happen to think that mine is a more concrete and realistic plan. And by the way, who exactly *are* these "more worthwhile sources" that you mention?And how are THEY getting the Dem side in the Halls of Congress? Because I'm talking to a few who would greatly appreciate knowing, so they can include the Dem side in the pieces the submit for publication.
My view is, you work with the media you have, not with the media you wish you had. In other words, reality.
As for more worthwhile sources, it's up to the individual but I'll just ask a question. If you want a fact-based and in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of European health care and a weighing of how well their ideas would work in America, where would you go? You wouldn't go to the New York Times, NBC, or CNN. But you would be able to find it.