Tempest in an AP Cup

The Associated Press found itself making news this week rather than merely reporting it.

First, the AP misreported election results in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, leading the challenger to mistakenly believe she had won the contest. While awaiting official returns and open to confusing their own expectations with facts, the unionized writers at AP failed to notice that votes from an entire city, a strongly conservative stronghold, were missing from their list. While the AP missed the numbers, bloggers didn't.

As you can see, Brookfield Patch reported the correct numbers on April 6th, the morning after the election, even showing the vote details by ward. That the powerful Associated Press can't report straight is no surprise. That it is still taken seriously, is.

The result was mass confusion and a national story. The unions, which had spent more than $3 million on the election, went nuts and are now engaged in a great hunt for voting fraud. No fraud, the count matches the vote, just poor reporting.

The numbers didn't change from the beginning. Justice Prosser won, straight up.

Glenn Reynolds points out another example from that same day. In a story run at 3:26 PM ET, the AP reported

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle. 

"If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know," Obama said laughingly. "You might want to think about a trade-in."

Within four hours, the AP "disappeared" the quote from their own story.

Proving once again, you can't believe everything you read in the legacy media.

UPDATE and BUMPED: Dan Foster over at National Review's Corner has a great summary of the facts of the matter in Wisconsin. I urge you to read it.