On Friday the AP falsely reported that a crowd at a Bush rally booed the news that Bill Clinton had been hospitalized, and President Bush "did nothing to stop them."

On Friday afternoon, an Associated Press (AP) story reported that a crowd at a Bush rally in Wisconsin, responded to President Bush’s news that former President Clinton had been hospitalized with chest pains and faced bypass surgery, and Bush’s best wishes for Clinton’s speedy recovery, with boos. The AP, a wire service founded in 1848, describes itself as “the largest and oldest news organization in the world.”

Audience boos as Bush offers best wishes for Clinton’s recovery
By Associated Press, 9/3/2004 13:57

WEST ALLIS, Wis. (AP) President Bush (news – web sites) on Friday wished Bill Clinton (news – web sites) "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery."

"He's is in our thoughts and prayers, Bush said at a campaign rally.

Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wisconsin, booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.

Bush offered his wishes while campaigning one day after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Clinton was hospitalized in New York after complaining of mild chest pain and shortness of breath.

Bush recently praised Clinton when the former president went to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait. He lauded Clinton for his knowledge, compassion and “the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president.”

In fact, however, the crowd had responded with respectful applause.

The false story was immediately caught and reported to conservative talk radio shows and blogs. Less than one hour after the story first went out on the wire, under the byline of AP reporter Tom Hays, it was retracted, corrected, and the original link killed. The new title was “Bush offers best wishes for Clinton's recovery.” There was no mention of the changes; however, the  later version without the “boos” run by the New York Times-owned Boston Globe still carried the title “audience boos as bush offers best wishes for clintons recovery” in its URL.

Some original versions of the story carried the reporter’s name, but at least one original version and all later versions were published without a byline.  Blogger Jonathan V. Last of Galley Slaves, however, determined though a Lexis-Nexis search, that the AP reporter was Tom Hays.

Last came up with a 649-word version of the AP story, entitled “Bill Clinton hospitalized with chest pains, will face bypass surgery,” which included the booing, and which also credited “Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Frank Eltman in New York, David Hammer in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Marc Humbert in Albany, New York …”

Last commented, “So the AP: (1) Puts out a story with falsified reporting; (2) Pulls the story; (3) Removes the faulty reporting; (4) Makes no note of its mistake; and then (5) Pulls the byline of the reporter who made the error. If you were going to impute bad faith to the folks at AP — and at this point that's not unreasonable to do — you might suspect that they have pulled Tom Hays's byline to protect him.”

At AP headquarters in New York, staffer Mark Kennedy, an entertainment writer, directed this reporter to the wire service’s corporate communications division, adding, “We’re also supposed to note that we, that we changed the [crowd] reaction from, to ‘oohs of surprise,’ apparently rather than ‘boos,’ if that makes any difference.”

By press time, AP corporate communications had not responded to telephone and e-mail requests for comment.