AP reporter tweets Raiders coach fired, except he wasn't

I wonder if this development will somehow find its way to the painfully self-serving blog of the AP's "standards editor," under a "Great Whiffs" heading.

http://blog.ap.org/2014/09/08/some-great-saves/

 

Another question: Is Schefter at all accountable for retweeting unconfirmed information?

I would say he's on the right side of the line, since it was from a typically reliable source, the AP, though reporting on a typically unreliable medium, The Twitters.

 

My theory: This is a news reporter who has never covered sports who was probably watching the game with buddies and got a text from someone and decided to feel like a big shot on Twitter, not knowing what he was in for.

I don't blame Schefter (or anyone else). When a report has AP attached to it, that means something.

 

Schefter knows better than to retweet this guy. Schefter knows which guys are in the know and Schefter could verify the story with one call.

The only way this guy breaks that story is if the Raiders give it to them specifically, and if that was the case, there would be more info in the tweet.

 

The part of it that elevates it way, way higher for me is the "I was never covering the story" backtrack.

If you fucked up, just own it and don't pull that bullshit.

That's what COULD push it into the fireable offense zone for me.

 

AP needs to say exactly what happened. Lord knows if it was the NYTimes, we'd be reading an ombudsman piece on it by now.

 

Just guessing, but I would imagine that last tweet was made at the direction of AP. If not, he may be too stupid to keep his job.

 

One form of discipline: make him sit next to Dennis Allen on the flight from London back to California.

 

Make him get a Mark Davis haircut.

 

Nice.

Allen will be fired soon, and hopefully TMZ breaks it.