Wednesday 23 November 2022 04:44 AM Texts reveal AP reporter passed on the tip but was fired anyway trends now

The Associated Press' firing of a reporter over a false story about a missile strike in Poland last week has come into question, as leaked messages reveal the journalist deferred judgement on the piece to higher-ups but was canned anyway.

The correspondence transpired on Slack Tuesday, minutes before the outlet filed a news alert that that 'a senior US intelligence official' said 'Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland.' 

The attack, the report from the wire service noted, left two dead. 

Almost immediately, fears of an escalation of tensions between the US and Russia became widespread, as the world took the story as true without questioning its contents.

But within hours - after countless cable news networks and outlets had picked up the news - national security officials would dismiss the report was false, forcing the AP to retract the piece a day later. 

On Monday, the outlet fired James LaPorta, the national security reporter who received the tip that set the story in motion. The tip, the wire service said, came from a single source who turned out to be incorrect.

LaPorta's firing was reported that day by the Daily Beast, and then confirmed by the Washington Post. Both publications quoted AP sources that put the blame solely on the 35-year-old journalist. 

However, the slack messages obtained by global news platform Semafor tell a completely different story - rife with miscommunications, internal confusion, and a lack of a clear procedure to vet the tip's accuracy before publishing.

AP has not disciplined any of its other staffers for the blunder, which has brought the credibility of one of the most reliable news services into question - and has left an award-winning journalist and father out of a job.

On Tuesday afternoon at 1:32 pm ET, LaPorta - who has bylines across several publications including PBS, Newsweek, and The Daily Beast - approached his editors in an internal Slack channel with the erroneous tip.

Writing to the several senior staffers, Laporta said that he’d been notified by 'a senior US intelligence source' that Russian missiles had crossed into Moldova and Poland.

LaPorta, protecting the insider's identity, described the tipster as a political 'official (vetted by Ron Nixon),' referring to AP's VP of news and investigations. 

Despite this assertion, people involved with the matter said Nixon was not aware of that tip or that story, even though he had used that specific source in the past.

However, in this particular instance, LaPorta's initial message did not claim that Nixon had vetted the source - but within minutes, his words were interpreted by editors that that had been the case.

One of those editors, Lisa Leff of the outlet's European desk, promptly asked if they could send out an alert containing the tip's contents, or if they would need to wait for further confirmation from another source. 

The AP’s typical rule, the outlet has since said amid fallout over the reporting, is that it 'routinely seeks and requires more than one source when sourcing is anonymous.'

In response, Laporta - who was not on the clock at the time and had been at a doctor's appointment - simply wrote: 'That call is above my pay grade.'

When Leff asked if LaPorta could write the story, he notified her of his previous obligation.

'I’m actually at a doctor’s appointment,' he wrote, adding, 'What I passed along is all I know at the moment.'

Despite this deferral, Deputy European news editor Zeina Karam would decide to publish the alert at 1:41 pm ET - less than ten minutes after LaPorta’s initial message.

Insiders familiar with the matter said that, at the time, Karam and her fellow editors believed that Nixon had vetted the source, with one source telling the The Beast that LaPorta left 'the impression that the story's sourcing had been approved.'

The leaked messages, meanwhile, seem to contradict those claims, as they provide no indication that Laporta suggested to his team that the tip had gone through the proper channels.

The story promptly caused panic across the world that NATO and much of the Western world would be dragged into Putin's war against Ukraine - but it ultimately proved to be false.

The newswire report, sent to countless publications across several countries, read: 'A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.' 

The piece, originally co-bylined with reporter John Leicester - who still works at the AP - attributed the information to Laporta single 'senior U.S. intelligence official' source.