Associated Press deletes controversial tweet on Clinton’s State Department meetings: We ‘fell short’
REUTERS/Rick Wilking
Hillary Clinton.
The Associated Press on Thursday deleted a controversial tweet it published in late August about Hillary Clinton’s discretionary meetings at the State Department.
“The Associated Press today is deleting a 2-week-old tweet about Hillary Clinton’s meetings as Cabinet secretary after concluding the tweet fell short of AP standards by omitting essential context, John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, announced in a blog post.
The original tweet linked to a story which found that, of calendar records obtained by the AP, more than half of Clinton’s discretionary meetings at the State Department were with Clinton Foundation donors.
However, the tweet “omitted the important distinction between discretionary meetings and official meetings,” Daniszewski said in the blog post.
Here’s the text from the original August 23 tweet:
BREAKING: AP analysis: More than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.
The AP replaced it with this tweet Thursday afternoon:
AP review: Many of the discretionary meetings Clinton had at State were with people who gave to Clinton Foundation. https://t.co/ih6Oitgou2
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 8, 2016
Clinton supporters and some journalists had criticized the news organization for the tweet, something the AP acknowledged in its blog post.
As a result of the controversy, the AP said it had examined its Twitter guidelines and updated them. It also held training for editors this week.
The AP said tweets would now be subject to the “same internal review and response process as other AP content.” Whenever a tweet is deleted, the AP said it would post a follow-up tweet explaining the cause for its removal and, “in most cases, the AP will then transmit a replacement tweet.”
“We have to be the AP, wherever our work is being distributed,” AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said. “Do we wish we had gotten to this conclusion earlier than we did? Absolutely.”
“Unpacking how we fell short of our own standards is a painful process, but a necessary one,” she added. “The new guidelines are stronger as a result.”
The AP also deleted an additional tweet pertaining to Donald Trump and NBA player Dwyane Wade that was published on August 27:
AP deleted a poorly worded Aug. 27 tweet that appeared to equate Donald Trump and Dwyane Wade’s responses to the shooting of Wade’s cousin.
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 8, 2016
A representative from the Clinton campaign was not immediately available for comment.
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