The AP is a wire service. Their job is to write stories and feed them to all manner of outlets around the world. They provide a valuable service for smaller news outlets with limited staff, furnishing regional, state-wide and national stories to fill out broadcast newscasts and a newspaper's blank column inches. Working weekends in small market radio stations I would go to the clanking black machine in the news room to pull copy for hourly newscasts. It was called, "Rip and read". That concept appears alive and well today as newspapers, blogs and other media rely on the AP, Reuters and other smaller news services pump out the news each day.
How pervasive is the use of AP stories? Google "New guidelines could rule out many oil claims"
or click this link and see how many times the AP story with this title shows up. The first three pages of Google results I saw showed the story on web sites from ABC, CBS, Newsmax, Breitbart, Yahoo, SFGate, USA Today and many of the other usual suspects. It also appears on web sites of local stations from coastal Mississippi's WLOX-TV to stations in Washington, DC, Las Vegas, Boise and Santa Barbara.
So what's the problem? The word is getting out across the country to media outlets large and small. No, that's not the problem. The fact that they are all re-transmitting stories from a single source is. There is no equivalent, competitive news source that might have access to different facts and views from different sources. Think of it like only being able to get your news from MSNBC, Fox News or CNN. No matter how fair or balanced they claim to be, you're only going to hear from their sources through their reporters. Not a good environment for differing perspectives to get out. Not differing opinions, but different perspectives.
I don't know what the solution to this problem might be. News gathering, especially investigative reporting is a costly business. Even more so when the subject is so technically complex as the BP oil spill. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) recently laid off staff from their news organization, big city newspapers are bankrupt and Newsweek magazine was recently sold for just a dollar. When there's no reasonable revenue stream in these efforts, it's impossible to justify the spend.
Please do not satisfy yourself by saying there are leagues of "citizen journalists" or bloggers (Iike me) who will step in to fill the gap. They cannot. Not in the way an honest journalist can. They don't adhere to the same standards of fact-checking and source corroboration that legitimate reporters are trained to do. Also, many of these bloggers exist to promote some political agenda. Left, right. Government or business. They often report based upon their talking points which isn't reporting at all. It's editorializing. Not much help if you are looking for the truth.
What's left is getting the story for yourself. Hard to do if you're in Presque Isle, Maine or Tierra del Fuego. But those closer to the Gulf can talk and listen. Go to public meetings on the spill or government town hall meetings. Have a beer at a local pub or tavern and sit at the bar. Talk to those on your left and right and find out what they know, or have only just heard. Go to the marinas and talk with the fishermen. Go to the restaurants and talk to the owners. Listen to whoever will talk with you. Sure, you will get a lot of opinions and second-hand information but some facts will surface as well. Then it's up to you to form your own opinions. Share it all with people you know and listen to what they have to say. After all that, if you don't like what's happening, go out and do something about it.
Like legendary San Francisco radio commentator Wes "Scoop" Nisker says, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
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