Someone in the media has finally been held accountable for worrying about being first before worrying about being right.
Award-winning Associated Press reporter James LaPorta is no longer employed by AP.
The outlet terminated him on Monday after investigating the trail that led to his erroneous report on Russia bombing Poland.
Big Mistake
We all fell for this.
After the AP reported the story, several other news outlets picked up and it started to go viral.
RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKE: Two Russian missiles crossed over the Ukrainian border into Poland, a NATO country, killing two civilians. Ukraine’s president says the world “must act” and the head of NATO called for an emergency meeting for tomorrow morning. pic.twitter.com/VeR8sWjEqF
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) November 15, 2022
Not only that, but Ukrainian President Zelensky used the report to gather support for dragging NATO into the conflict.
Zelensky: “Terror is not limited to our national borders. Russian missiles hit Poland. … To fire missiles at NATO territory. This is a Russian missile attack on collective security! This is a very significant escalation. We must act.” pic.twitter.com/0T85fpEqLS
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) November 15, 2022
It turns out the bombing was not done by Russia, but actually by an air defense missile from Ukraine.
By this time, even alt-media had reported that Russia had bombed Poland, myself included.
Thankfully, we got an update before it circulated too much.
It also appeared that LaPorta may have skipped a step in the editorial process as well.
The Washington Post did a report claiming that LaPorta told editors that a senior manager had already reviewed the story and given it a thumbs up, so they just passed it right through.
Even if he hadn't, however, an editor noted the story probably would have gone live due to his alleged source.
The editor stated that she would have voted to publish the alert because she could not "imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong on this."
And, that, my friends, is all it takes for a fake news story to go live these days.
The truly scary aspect of all this is that had Poland not immediately investigated the bombing, we could all be in the middle of WWIII right now.
Zelensky put as much pressure as he could on NATO to get them to jump in immediately, with some Ukrainian officials denying the report even after it had been investigated.
He did himself no favors with Republicans who are already sick and tired of the blank check Biden has given him.
Source: The Blaze
