-thumb-110x110-461780.jpg)
Simply Wrong Food: IHOP's Holiday Pancakes
-thumb-110x110-461916.jpg)
Alice Cooper, Ace Frehley @ Nokia Theater 10/28/09
Eat My Blog: Blogger Bake Sale Will Benefit LA Foodbank
DVD Review: Kobe Doin' Work
Review: Living In Emergency
How much Britney coverage is too much? Whatever it is, it's not enough. In an e-mail memo, obtained by Gawker, sent this morning from Frank Baker, Assistant Bureau Chief, Los Angeles, he tells staff that "virtually everything involving Britney is a big deal."
"That doesn't mean every rumor makes it on the wire," he continues, "But it does mean that we want to pay attention to what other are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire."
So we sought to confirm Gawker's memo with the AP ourselves. News Editor, Andy Sternberg, spoke to Baker and confirmed that the memo was sent this morning in response to an "internal communication." Despite prodding, Baker refused to comment further on what prompted the memo and how -- if at all AP's Spears coverage may change.
Photo by concreteframes via Flickr
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Were AP staffers looking for better guidelines for reporting Britney rumors? Were they threatening to boycott Britney stories (as they did with Paris Hilton last year?
No matter how out-of-context this memo was leaked, the subject matter is disgusting.
As Baker insinuates in the memo, the AP IS the wire and must toe the line so as not to get scooped by the Perez Hiltons of the world but to also be careful to not pass along extraneous and irrelevant if not misleading gossip from such sources.
AP has the ability to "bury" Britney news rumors at will but quite sadly it appears the MSM is more concerned with having a ragdoll to throw around (ala Anna Nicole).
The Associated Press *used* to be one of the most reliable sources of news or information in America. Sadly, in the aftermath of poor coverage in advance of the Iraq War, poor 2004 election reporting leading up to the reelection of Bush, and most recently the perpetuation of the myth of "al-Qaeda in Iraq" as the main anti-American force in the area, AP writers should be pushed to confirm their stories or -- in the case of this new War on Britney -- "rumors."
That's alot of babies.