{"id":534924,"date":"2021-05-21T19:06:06","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T23:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=534924"},"modified":"2021-05-21T19:06:08","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T23:06:08","slug":"the-aps-empty-gesture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-aps-empty-gesture\/","title":{"rendered":"The AP\u2019s Empty Gesture"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-aps-empty-gesture%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=534924&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Associated-Press-2.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>The Associated Press on Thursday announced it had parted ways with Emily Wilder, a cub reporter whose anti-Semitic tweets were the subject of a <\/span><i><span>Washington Free Beacon<\/span><\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/media\/ap-hires-anti-israel-activist-as-news-associate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>report<\/span><\/a><span> published two days earlier.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Wilder&#8217;s &#8220;cancellation&#8221; has become the latest cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre of the navel-gazing Beltway media, which are using the incident to accuse the right in general, and the <em>Free <\/em><\/span><i><span>Beacon <\/span><\/i><span>in particular, of supporting the &#8220;cancel culture&#8221; they claim to decry.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;Imagine being the world&#8217;s largest news organization and caving to the <\/span><i><span>Washington Free Beacon<\/span><\/i><span>,&#8221; <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KatzOnEarth\/status\/1395551802641297412\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>tweeted<\/span><\/a><span> the former AP correspondent Jonathan Myerson Katz, who called the brouhaha an embarrassment for the AP.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Wilder herself weighed in Thursday in an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/politics\/article\/Emily-Wilder-Associated-Press-Israel-Palestine-AP-16192391.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>interview<\/span><\/a><span> with the <em>San Francisco<\/em><\/span><i><span> Chronicle<\/span><\/i><span>: &#8220;<\/span><span>There&#8217;s no question I was just canceled,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This is exactly the issue with the rhetoric around \u2018cancel culture.'&#8221;&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The <em>Free <\/em><\/span><i><span>Beacon <\/span><\/i><span>report chronicled Wilder&#8217;s history as a left-wing campus activist and her derision of the late Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson as a &#8220;naked mole rat.&#8221; No fans of cancel culture, we oppose her dismissal, which appears to have been a result of the wire service&#8217;s sensitivity to charges of anti-Israel bias and unprofessional conduct in its ranks after news reports revealed that its Gaza bureau shared an office building with the Hamas terror organization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Anti-Israel bias, political activism, and intemperate social media posts clearly do not disqualify one for work at the AP, so Wilder&#8217;s dismissal is puzzling if it is seen as anything other than an organization looking for a quick fix to a public relations headache.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Look no further than Gaza bureau chief Fares Akram, who has lionized the late terror leader Yasser Arafat\u2014posting a photo of him to Facebook with the caption, &#8220;The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night&#8221;\u2014<\/span><span>who <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/middle-east\/gaza-death-and-life-my-father-1225793.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>said<\/span><\/a><span> in 2009 that he finds it &#8220;difficult to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza,&#8221; and who was, before he joined the AP, an activist working as a consultant for the left-wing Human Rights Watch, which has labeled Israel an apartheid state.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Wilder is a kid whose radical college activism became a matter of public interest in light of the organization&#8217;s tendentious Gaza coverage. Bad timing. Her firing also served as a cheap and convenient bone to toss to critics. If the AP were serious about addressing the problems Wilder represents, it would take a good look at its hiring and promotion process, where political activism has been rewarded and where standards have been applied capriciously.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>If the AP were serious in its concern that the broader public view it as an independent and sober source of news, it might take a closer look at a hiring process that greenlights political activists and a management that promotes them to positions of power and influence.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In the meantime, we will continue to chronicle their shortcomings.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Associated Press on Thursday announced it had parted ways with Emily Wilder, a cub reporter whose anti-Semitic tweets were the subject of a Washington Free Beacon report published two &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893655,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}