u235

The headline reads "AP review finds no WikiLeaks sources threatened". And the headline isn't slightly misleading, it is *completely* misleading. Which leads me to believe that the author of said headline isn't a very neutral party, but rather someone hoping:

a) for the article to be as widely picked up and distributed as the news of Wikileaks dumping a shit-ton of un-redacted files on the web
b) that most people don't read past the headline
c) people believe everything they read (it's in print therefore it *must* be true!)

As for 'a', well, that depends on the quality of the main news distributors. Will CNN, Fox, Reuters, Times and the like publish this on the front page? I'm not seeing it happen yet so perhaps they have higher standards. Which is where 'b' and 'c' come in. Because we, at WoS, do have those higher standards, we read past the headline and no, of course we don't believe everything we read (believe you me).

What really boils me is this paragraph, nestled deeply in the middle of the rather long winded article.

The AP survey is selective and incomplete; it focused on those sources the State Department seemed to categorize as most risky. (AP)

There you have it. On the one hand the article title says that "NO sources were threatened" and then quietly they whisper "Oh, but we didn't check everyone, just the easy ones."

Most people would call that shoddy journalism. I could call it a bald-faced lie. But I would just rather say that BRADLEY KLAPPER and CASSANDRA VINOGRAD (yes all in caps) are weaksauce reporters who would do better to have their high-school journalism teacher review their work before pushing out a potentially incendiary piece onto the internet.

So, Brad and Cassie, here's a word of advice from the world at large. Don't make claims you can't substantiate. And. If you do choose to make a claim, especially in 20pt bold , don't fucking refute your own headline N+1 paragraphs later. Idiots. You're not AP quality.