AP cracks down on its own affiliate

The Associated Press has threatened an affiliate for embedding AP videos (from TechCrunch):

In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.

The AP is mad as hell

It’s true. AP Chairman Dean Singleton said so in his remarks at the AP Annual Meeting, held yesterday in San Diego:

AP and its member newspapers and broadcast associate members are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today. We must be paid fully and fairly.

We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more.

In other words, Glenn Beck has now found a kindred spirit.

Peter Kafka, while sympathizing with the AP, doubts the nascent crusade’s effectiveness:

The thing is, even if the news guys somehow stopped people from using Google to find information they need, it wouldn’t do anything to solve the essential problems plaguing their business. Such as:

Seattle Times is looking at you, bloggers

The Seattle Times decided to take the low road and drag bloggers into its editorial about the AP’s lawsuit against All Headline News. Well, let’s all party like it’s 2003.

The context: The Associated Press is suing All Headline News for copying the AP’s stories and then selling them to other news outlets.

Which is all the Seattle Times needed to go off on a tangent and declare open season on the arrogant bloggers who don’t realize they’d have nothing to bitch about if it weren’t for professional journalists getting their hands dirty doing the expensive work of newsgathering and reporting:

A petition to shut down news websites

A freelance writer wants U.S. newspapers and the AP to shut down their websites for a week in July. The purpose? To demonstrate the importance of original newsgathering efforts and disprove the notion that professional journalists can be replaced by volunteer bloggers:

Why the Steelers won

So you’re the Associated Press writer charged with  recapping the Ravens-Steelers match-up on Sunday, and you just HAVE to mention that two hometown superstars were at the game. Well, why not imply that they had an inspirational hand in the Steelers’ victory?

Maybe it helped that the two athletes largely responsible for Pittsburgh’s last two major sports championships — former Steelers running back Jerome Bettis and Penguins co-owner and Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux — were among the record crowd of 65,350 in Heinz Field.

Because defense doesn’t win championships. Magic does.

AP lets Cheney off the hook

I’ll leave the sweeping indictments of the mainstream media (MSM) to others. Suffice it to say, today’s AP’s interview with Vice President Cheney is an example of inadequate journalism, where assertions were allowed to stand without further question or illumination.

To summarize Cheney’s statements: