Another Associated Press Blunder
Recently, the Associated Press wrote about a joke Queen Elizabeth II told at a state dinner in her honor.
The gist: Earlier, President George Bush began to mistakenly refer to the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence as having happened in 1776, before catching his error and correcting the date.
Says the Associated Press:
The year 1776 cannot be a favorite year for the queen. It is the year when the monarch at the time of the American Revolution, George III, lost his richest colony.
Wrong again, AP.
The United States declared its independence in 1776 but was far from independent. Although according to Wikipedia, by the time of the Declaration’s signing Patriots controlled all of the colonial governments, the British had been forced from Boston and had evacuated all royal officials, America was far from pacified.
Again, according to Wikipedia, in late 1776 Britain significantly increased its military presence in the colonies; by 1778, although the war was going badly in the North, Britain had seized control of New York and Philadelphia (albeit Philly was abandoned not long after being taken), and turned back the U.S. invasion of Canada.
Fighting continued in the South from 1778 to 1781, with the war effectively over after Yorktown fell. It wasn’t technically over, however, until November 1782, when “preliminary peace treaties” were signed.
It may seem like picking nits to say Britain didn’t lose America in 1776, but that’s the point. The entire premise of the queen’s joke is to poke fun at the president for a slip. Isn’t it therefore incumbent upon the AP to get the facts right? Jabbing someone for an obvious mistake is basically the story’s premise, so how in the world can the AP make its gaffe, even if the gaffe is basically a gross simplification being used as a bridge to another thought?
Seriously, I wonder how the national wire can carry statements so inane when intelligent people write and edit them. If they can’t do that right, why in the world would you trust anything they say?
