Yet more skewed AP priorities--climategate

"Going Rogue 11, ClimateGate 5" (from The Voice in my Head blog--link to original for indents and links)

Remember this?

If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's eleven writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned eleven writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book

Now we have this. From the AP's article covering (up) ClimateGate:

The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them—about 1 million words in total.

That's less than half the reporters they assigned to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's book.

To be fair, that article also tells us:

As part of the AP review, summaries of the e-mails that raised issues from the potential manipulation of data to intensely personal attacks were sent to seven experts in research ethics, climate science and science policy.

OK. But read this at Watts Up With That: AP’s Seth Borenstein is just too damn cozy with the people he covers – time for AP to do something about it.

Well.

http://thevimh.blogspot.com/2009/12/going-rogue-11-climategate-5.html