Wednesday 9 January 2008

International Herald Tribune and the Power of Copy Editors

My previous post was prompted by the story doing the rounds that Fox News edited out Ron Paul from an AP story.

This blogger http://codepiranha.org/2008/01/08/fox-news/ explains it clearly, but basically the International Herald Tribune ran an AP piece that had Ron Paul visiting a state; Fox News ran the same piece and a copy editor at Fox News edited out Ron Paul's visit.

The power of the copy editor...

What then the power of the wire services, prey as they are to the re-touching of copy editors. Not great for AP brand credibility, but then again, hardly their fault.

Update: 11/01/08

Now I'm confused: here's someone who reckons it was all an honest mistake....
http://www.landofbile.com/blog/2008/01/10/fox-news-not-editing-ron-paul-out-of-ap-news-stories/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Could it have been a mistake? Sure. But Fox News makes these "mistakes" all the time... They have repeatedly mischaracterized Republicans involved in scandals as Democrats and, as for Ron Paul, they've repeatedly removed him from online polls and have tried excluding him from debates. Too many mistakes and you start to think it's intentional...

Thanks for the link, btw!