Contaminated AP stories on rise

It sounds like the Associated Press has a serious fraking problem. Greg Sargent explains:

Those funding provisions that the GOP is insinuating Pelosi included because they benefit her husband's real estate were actually initiated by a local agency in San Francisco, the agency says, and not by Pelosi herself. It took one phone call to nail that down -- and to show that this is a complete non-story.

But the AP went ahead and ran with this crap anyway. It was bad enough that the AP even ran some versions of the story with a headline that wasn't even supported by the story in the first place, as Media Matters noted. Now we find that the story doesn't hold up at all.

Look, this kind of thing bogs down arguments by good journalists that there's not an agenda at work. It's happened too many times, it's too transparent and it's more than "laziness." It's hackery of the worst sort, and it needs to stop.

Member papers need to get on the AP about this baloney, and they certainly need to instruct their own editors to be on the lookout for contaminated AP stories. Some keywords to look for include "haircut," "front lawn" and "square footage."