AP admits it

According to Salon (go ahead, subscribe), the reason the major news organizations give for not covering the Downing Street Memo was because they were looking an AP wire story on it, and AP didn't produce one.

This is basically an admission on the part of the major media outlets that they have no independent thought processes, and are addicted to the Lemming Method of news reporting.

But the AP at least admitted screwing up royally:

In response to a request for comment, Deborah Seward, AP's international editor, conceded to Salon in an e-mail, "Yes, there is no question AP dropped the ball in not picking up on the Downing Street memo sooner."

That's more than the New York Times and the Washington Post have done: they have chosen to circle the wagons, and stubbornly cling to their illusion of virtue and objectivity. If they didn't report it, it must not have been newsworthy. And the rooster made the sun come up.

Salon comments:

But a more pressing question remains about the media at large and the group think at play: Why, in the face of the clearly newsworthy memo -- which made international headlines and went straight to the issue of how and why President Bush decided to invade Iraq -- did senior editors and producers at virtually every major American news outlet let the story slip through the cracks and fail to do the most rudimentary reporting?