Hand wringing at the Associated Press: neutrality, politics, Pussy Riot, Ukraine, Cossacks, Sevastopol, Crimea, and the nomenclature of geography

O, the handwringing agony AP goes through,
explaining where Crimea is.

The Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, wherever their borders begin and end (the borders keep moving around), are not my favorite parts of the world.

My grandparents fled from that general vicinity, a genetically-challenged horde of remorseless barbarians and rapists called Cossacks chasing them down on horseback from behind, cracking what were probably the very same whips they used on Pussy Riot a century later.

So I have not the slightest yearning to visit the aulde sod. Not ever. Screw ‘em. Chernobyl was what they richly deserved.

As you might gather from what I’ve written so far, I am not a purely unbiased observer. In fact, anybody who can remain unbiased about that part of the world, in my opinion, has a brain made of equal parts of machine parts, fried microchips and sawdust. So far as I’m concerned, everybody there – pick whatever political flavor you prefer – is an odious turd until incontrovertibly proven otherwise.

So I watch with some cold-blooded amusement as the Associated Press gets its knickers in a twist deciding what and where the hell Crimea is, and how to locate it geographically while remaining unbiased. Or at least while maintaining the appearance of being unbiased.

Of course, all news reporting must have some kind of bias. Reporters and editors choose what to observe and report, and what to leave out, and how to arrange what they do report. Otherwise, an AP report of a public execution might begin, "Edmund 'The Thug' Cossackova was hanged in public today in front of a crowd of 1172 people, 42 percent of whom were wearing brown shoes and 61 percent were wearing black shoes while most of the remainder wore sneakers, except for a woman in purple pumps...."

But I’m wandering off-topic. Well, only sort of.

In a recent post on its own blog, those cog-brained Makers Of Important Decisions at the AP wrung their hands and declared:

Previously, we wrote “SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (AP).” But Ukraine no longer controls Crimea, and AP datelines should reflect the facts on the ground.Therefore, effective this week, we are using the city name and “Crimea”: “SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (AP).”

 But wait a second, you totally unbiased, always accurate, AP neuterheads. Russia is in the process of annexing Crimea, if not the whole Ukraine, right? So shouldn’t your stories be datelined, “SEVASTOPOL Russia, (AP)?”

Well, err, ah, um, uh, n-n-n-nooo says the AP. Why?  And they explain that, too.

Why not “SEVASTOPOL, Russia” if Russia formalizes its annexation of the territory? The reason is that Crimea is geographically distinct from Russia; they have no land border. Saying just the city name and “Crimea” in the dateline, even in the event of full annexation, would be consistent with how we handle geographically separate parts of other countries. For instance, we just say “Sicily” and “Sardinia” in datelines — “PALERMO, Sicily (AP)” — even though they are part of Italy, and “Guadeloupe” in datelines

So, uh, let me see if I understand this then, AP. When you report from Alaska or Hawaii, which are geographically separate from the lower 48 of the USA, you don’t consider them part of the United States? 

Well, yeah, I get it that you dateline stories “Honolulu, Hawaii (AP)” and “Anchorage, Alaska, (AP) but that’s no different from datelining stories “Buffalo, New York (AP),” or “East Yipsilanti, Michigan (AP)” and both of those are geographically contiguous with the rest of the United States.

And what about Nantucket, Massachusetts? It’s an island, that is detached from the rest of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So shouldn't you be datelining stories from there, “Nantucket, Atlantic Ocean (AP)?” Or, “The Independent Island and Primarily Wealthy Peoples’ Republic of Nantucket (AP)?”

And what about the island of Manhattan, which is not only separated by water from the mainland United States, but also from Brooklyn and Queens and the rest of New York State? If you follow your own stupid rule, shouldn't the dateline from a story about Times Square be datelined, "Broadway and 42nd Street, Manhattan (AP)?"

Once you start going down this road to nonsense nomenclature, dear editors, you're going to get lost  in a knotted tangle of your own underwear. And don’t expect the rest of us to find and untie you.

We’re all too busy wondering what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and whether Putin is toying with World War III. You’ll have to count the angels dancing on the head of a pin all by yourselves, while we look at news reports written by people who concern themselves with the news, not with appearances and politically neutral nomenclature.

The New York Crank crankily concurs with TechCrunch.com on this

@%&!!# it!

I am sick of doing media stories. This isn’t an effing media blog. It’s mostly a cranky political blog. But my hand is being forced by the Associated Press.

If I’ve been following all the news stories correctly, the AP is threatening to bring it’s considerable resources down on the head of any poor wretch of a blogger who dares to link to an AP story. For that matter, the way I've read some news stories, they're even threatening bloggers who link to any newspaper story in a paper, website or broadcast medium that is a member ofthe AP. In daily journalism, that’s about every one of ‘em.

The nincompoops on the AP board are the thickest dunderheads to come down the pike since God invented the morons who defend AIG bonuses.

The AP's theory is that even by linking to their content — or to the various online publications that use their content — bloggers, including us unpaid bloggers, are somehow profiting from their labor.

Gimme a break! When we link our comments about the news to a newspaper or AP story, we're generating traffic for their own websites, which profit from every page view. If they stop us, they're cutting off their noses to...well, you know the old cliche. The AP reminds me of the 19th Century Luddites who destroyed the fabric mills that might have directly or indirectly employed them so they could eke out a subsistence living as cottage weavers.

This idiocy needs to be slapped down. So I have to concur with techcrunch.com, that hereafter I will not link to any AP story, or to any newspaper website which on at least cursory inspection appears to belong to AP.

Instead, I will hearafter mention that “I read somewhere…” or that “I heard on a bus…” since what I’ll be repeating will be old news by the time I heard about it anyway. Who knows where I hear about things these days? A bus is as good as the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. They can go generate their own Internet views. Got me?

For additional details on the total idiocy of the AP policy, see Mathew Ingram’s analysis, here.

Associated Press reporter gets lost, can't find where he's reporting from

In an article datelined Danville, Calif., an Associated Press reporter today told the story of a couple who won a house in nearby Marin County, after the family breadwinner had lost his job.

And then the intrepid AP reporter revealed:

The house is in upscale Marin County, just north of San Francisco. The couple already own a home in Danville, a suburb south of San Francisco...

Small detail: Danville is a suburb east, not south of San Francisco. Check it out on the map.

Which raises some interesting questions such as:

• Did the reporter know where he or she was while reporting from Danville?

• Assuming the reporter is based at AP's San Francisco bureau, how did he or she get to Danville in the first place? Maybe while sleeping in the back of a helicopter?

• Is the AP fudging around here and actually reporting from San Francisco, doing its interviews via phone, and only pretending (tch tch) to be reporting directly from Danville?

My own theory is that the AP isn't lying about datelines. Its reporter somehow got to Danville, but now is hopelessly lost there and can't find his way home. Well, if he camps out on the streets, there's a terrific farmers' market there on Saturdays. Great produce!

This is an example of the sloppy reporting and editing you get when the news business, under pressure, pares down its staffing so severely that its "reporters" and the people who edit their copy don't have a clue where they're reporting from.

This time it's only a warm-your-heart feature story about a family that lost its source of income but won a$2 million house. Imagine what the AP is missing — or getting wrong — in Washington.