Correction: he didn’t write about having sex with a couch.

“The story, which did not go out on the wire to our customers, didn’t go through our standard editing process. We are looking into how that happened,” AP spokesperson Nicole Meir told The Verge in an email.

News reports (and fact-checks specifically) are often worded in a way that carefully threads a needle — there’s a difference between saying something definitively didn’t happen versus saying there’s no evidence of it. My guess is that the AP headline was the problem here because it claims to debunk something that is unknowable.

  • karika@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    I like this part:

    But there’s also technically no proof that Vance didn’t have sex with a couch — there’s no way a journalist could truly know that. He just didn’t write about it.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
    1·
    4 months ago

    Given the questionable state of the media in the US, I kind of wish they’d go all out and just start using Trumpisms.

    • “We have been unable to prove that Trump isn’t a pedophile”
    • “We’re not saying Vance stole money from orphans’ homes, but some people are”

    You know, that sort of stuff. It couldn’t be worse than 2 weeks talking about Biden’s age while ignoring that Trump is only 3 years younger; or jumping on every Biden brain-fart while ignoring Trump’s constant stream of incomprehensible mouth diarrhea.

    Edit forgot a “t”

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    Subtext: one of our lazy-ass contributors who only writes garbage about tweets sent in their usual dreck and we rubber-stamped it as we always do. Then somebody rich saw it and asked our director about it, and now it’s all this.

    Overt text: shocked_pikachu.jpg

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukMEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    I spotted it here but it was already gone from AP’s site, so I was wondering what that was all about. Now the removal of the news of the weird denial is now news itself - Newsception!

  • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    I’m going to start a news website posting articles with absolutely true titles that really sound like they really could have happened. Like this:

    “Donald Trump did NOT send a picture he drew of a giraffe to Mokgweetsi Masisi, President of Botswana”

    “JD Vance did NOT fornicate with the Ikea LINANÄS Sofa, with chaise/Vissle dark gray”

    "Mitch McConnell was NOT the victim of a failed Neuralink attempt from Elon Musk who was trying to communicate with The Mole Men "