Rainbow Politics
I am offering follow-up on my attempt to have a correction issued on the AP story yesterday, 7-1-2008 by Jennifer Loven - AP regarding Senator Obama's faith based programs. Loven stated, "Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and • in a move sure to cause controversy •support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.."
My goal was to request AP print either a retraction and or correction. After about an hour of several long distance calls where I was bounced from one person to a recording, then to a Donna Kasota (sp?) who abruptly hung up on me after referring me to a complaint line which takes recordings.
I called the Washington Bureau and was connected to a Jack Stokes. Mr Stokes wanted exact quotes of who got it wrong, given-see above, and who got it right, see below. I quoted John Whitesides of Reuters to Mr. Stokes. I also include Athena Jones here.
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
The Obama campaign says the AP's first report this morning that Obama supports "their [faith-based organizations'] ability to hire and fire based on faith" is incorrect. In fact, Obama's plan, they say, would prevent organizations from discriminating based on faith. Note: The second version of AP story says Obama would support "some ability to hire and fire based on faith." The change is of one word, from "their" to "some." But the campaign says the second version is still inaccurate.
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent Reuters "He stressed that recipients of government funds in the program would be prohibited from discrimination on religious grounds in hiring and from proselytizing with public funds, and the money could only be directed to nonreligious programs."
Mr. Stokes said, "I will look into it." The entire process was very negative. All I spoke with at AP were highly defensive, to some degree rude and vague. On the AP website they state, "For more than a century and a half, men and women of The Associated Press have had the privilege of bringing truth to the world. They have gone to great lengths, overcome great obstacles • and, too often, made great and horrific sacrifices • to ensure that the news was reported quickly, accurately and honestly. Our efforts have been rewarded with trust: More people in more places get their news from the AP than from any other source." from http://www.ap.org/newsvalues/index.html
I for one will be watching AP for further such mis-statements and calling them on it. I hope there will be support for holding AP to the statement on their website, enclosed above. Journalistic integrity is the issue here. That it would be so negative and difficult to get a correction is horrid. No mistake was admitted and no correction promised. I for one will get my news from a source other than AP. As Athena Jones points out above a second attempt by AP to get the story correct was still wrong. It will be interesting to see if AP stands by its statement above and makes the correction or just goes further with more incorrect coverage. However, by the way I was treated it seems AP has little regard for its readers, especially if they disagree with AP. A copy of this email is being sent to AP as I never received a response from my first email yesterday.