There are about 1,800 things wrong with the AP article on the relationship between those who donated to the Clinton Foundation and those who met with Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state. In particular, there’s the way the AP purposely restricted the number of meetings it was considering until it found a subset of data in which the results matched the narrative. It’s a classic case of forcing the data to meet the conclusion.
But when it comes to the AP’s original tweet, it’s just one big glaring error.
That’s not a debatable proposition. It’s simply wrong. And requesting that the AP delete or modify the tweet is perfectly reasonable.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is calling on The Associated Press to modify or delete a tweet about an investigative story on the Clinton Foundation.
And naturally the Associated Press is concerned enough about accuracy that they decided to let their completely wrong tweet go unchanged. The AP knows it’s wrong. But they’re not going to change it.
And if that’s not amazing enough, here's something else to consider:
Aides to the Democratic nominee say that the AP has not given them the actual list of the 85 foundation donors who the outlet says got access to Clinton while she was at State, making it hard for them to rebut charges that she engaged in quid-pro-quos. But on Wednesday, they began filling in the holes.
Get that? The AP defined the number of meetings they would consider, then declared that over half those on the remaining list are donors to the Clinton Foundation, but won’t tell anyone who is on the list.
The examples that the AP listed in their own article are exactly the kind of people you would expect the secretary of state to be meeting with—heads of large non-governmental organizations, some of whom already had relationships with the State Department through USAID.
It would be hard to pretend that a single person listed in the AP article would not have gotten a meeting with Hillary Clinton if they had not donated to the foundation. Hillary Clinton isn’t going to meet with Melinda Gates? She’s going to turn down an executive whose organization is partnering with USAID to fight AIDS? She’s not going to open her door to the Noble Prize-winning economist who pioneered micro lending or the head of a three-decades old organization for peace in the Middle East?
If Hillary Clinton had refused to meet with any of these people, it would be more newsworthy than the fact that she did meet with them.
Who else is on the AP’s list? We don’t know. We have the AP’s word that 40 of the 85 names on their list donated over $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. However, based on the examples we’ve already seen, many of the people in this group likely either worked for companies or belonged to organizations that made such contributions rather than writing a personal check.
What we don’t have are the names. Because the AP not only brought thousands of meetings down to 154, to get the headline they wanted, they won’t show more than a handful of the names behind that headline.
The Associated Press declined on Wednesday to disclose the list of 85 people who it reportedly identified as having donated as much as $156 million to the foundation.
That’s simply amazing. And what’s even more amazing? Other media is still treating the AP piece as if it’s genuine news.