Does the independent panel’s investigation into journalistic sins at CBS belong alongside such fare as an article on “Desperate Housewives” in your local newspaper or Web site?
Evidently some cynic at the Associated Press thinks so. In a bit of unwarranted schadenfreude, AP apparently tagged its feature story on the CBS scandal as entertainment news. Consequently, it ended up in the “entertainment” category on Web sites including Yahoo News and ABCNews.com.
Most newspapers put the story in either the national news category (as the Los Angeles Times did) or in the business section (like the New York Times and Washington Post, which both ran pieces on their front pages, and the Wall Street Journal [subscription required], which put it on B1). USA Today, meanwhile, dropped it into the “TV” category in its color-coded “Life” section.
We don’t have an entertainment section here at CJR Daily — not just yet, anyway. But if we did, that’s right where we’d put this smackdown of AP.
–Bryan Keefer
Bryan Keefer was CJR Daily’s deputy managing editor.