“The story, which did not go out on the wire to our customers, didn’t go through our standard editing process. We are looking into how that happened,” AP spokesperson Nicole Meir told The Verge in an email.

News reports (and fact-checks specifically) are often worded in a way that carefully threads a needle — there’s a difference between saying something definitively didn’t happen versus saying there’s no evidence of it. My guess is that the AP headline was the problem here because it claims to debunk something that is unknowable.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    AP retracts an article saying that JD Vance didn’t fuck a couch. 🤣

  • karika@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I like this part:

    But there’s also technically no proof that Vance didn’t have sex with a couch — there’s no way a journalist could truly know that. He just didn’t write about it.

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    We all need to take note that couches are incapable of consent. This was not a loving act. JD Vance raped that couch and who knows how many others.

    • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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      4 months ago

      Somehow, the soft furnishing #meto campaign failed to get any real traction.

      X accessibility options do not take the reasonable requirements of it upholstery limited users seriously.

      • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Somehow, the soft furnishing #meto campaign failed to get any real traction.

        It’s 'cause they’ve got those fuzzy pads on their legs. Makes 'em slide around.

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
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    4 months ago

    Given the questionable state of the media in the US, I kind of wish they’d go all out and just start using Trumpisms.

    • “We have been unable to prove that Trump isn’t a pedophile”
    • “We’re not saying Vance stole money from orphans’ homes, but some people are”

    You know, that sort of stuff. It couldn’t be worse than 2 weeks talking about Biden’s age while ignoring that Trump is only 3 years younger; or jumping on every Biden brain-fart while ignoring Trump’s constant stream of incomprehensible mouth diarrhea.

    Edit forgot a “t”

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukM
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    4 months ago

    I spotted it here but it was already gone from AP’s site, so I was wondering what that was all about. Now the removal of the news of the weird denial is now news itself - Newsception!

  • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’m going to start a news website posting articles with absolutely true titles that really sound like they really could have happened. Like this:

    “Donald Trump did NOT send a picture he drew of a giraffe to Mokgweetsi Masisi, President of Botswana”

    “JD Vance did NOT fornicate with the Ikea LINANÄS Sofa, with chaise/Vissle dark gray”

    "Mitch McConnell was NOT the victim of a failed Neuralink attempt from Elon Musk who was trying to communicate with The Mole Men "

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    4 months ago

    When I was in high school, a guy devised a sex toy from a rolled up towel, a food service disposable glove, a bed, and lotion. He called his invention a Fifi. We were at a military academy where bad kids with whits-end parents got sent. I wonder what happened to him. Maybe he invented real dolls when he grew up.

    • Notyou@sopuli.xyz
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      Haha. I forgot all about a Fifi. I found out about Fifi’s while deployed on ship. Glove, towel, lotion, and belt. The belt was to wrap around the towel up so it doesn’t unravel in the middle of using it. A couple dudes made them and was showing them to the rest of us. I ended up making one later.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukM
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      My brother’s best friend was at University in the early nineties and it was the birthdays if one of the guys he shared a house with so they all rushed into his room and shouted “surprise” but they got the surprise as he was humping a cut off shampoo bottle lined with a warm, wet flannel that he’d jammed between his mattress and bedframe.

      I imagine they’ll eventually find an ancient, improvised Fleshlight at Pompeii because as long as there are have been horny teenagers, there has probably been homemade vaginas.

    • Drusas@kbin.run
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      4 months ago

      When I was in high school, we carved a hole into some sort of melon and one of my friends took it into the bathroom for $5. I doubt he did anything to it, but who knows. He was like 16.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Subtext: one of our lazy-ass contributors who only writes garbage about tweets sent in their usual dreck and we rubber-stamped it as we always do. Then somebody rich saw it and asked our director about it, and now it’s all this.

    Overt text: shocked_pikachu.jpg