AP gratuitously inserted claims of rapes committed by U.S. service members
in Cambodia in 1970 that had been fabricated in 1997 into an obituary
in 2007.
“ | Jul 11, 4:43 PM EDT
Correction: David Mason Obit
LONDON (AP) -- In a June 27 obituary for veteran AP correspondent David
Mason, The Associated Press erroneously referred to a 1970 AP story
from Cambodia as having reported raping by U.S. troops during the
allied incursion against North Vietnamese communist forces there.
An initial AP dispatch, filed from Saigon on May 4, 1970,
described looting by U.S. soldiers at the Cambodian town of Snuol. The
mention of looting was removed by an editor in New York before the
story was transmitted to newspapers in the United States. Mason, who
was AP bureau chief in Saigon at the time, complained about the
deletion and AP general manager Wes Gallagher ordered the reference
restored.
No versions of the 1970 story from Saigon reported rape.
That erroneous reference first appeared 27 years later, in AP obituaries
for Gallagher on Oct. 11, 1997, and Oct. 13, 1997, from Santa Barbara,
Calif., and was inadvertently repeated in the Mason obituary on June
27, 2007.
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It all goes to the mindset of today's *quote* journalists *quote*
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