Surprise! The AP seems to have gotten its story about Army Emergency Relief a little wrong.

John of Argghhh:

Just where did Donn get his information? We really don’t know. Col. Cohen isn’t exactly sure, and neither are his counterparts at other military charities. The AP article says that they analyzed the tax records of the AER, but if they were doing such a great job, how did they miss the following:

1. During the period in question ( ’03-07), the AER distributed $250 MILLION in financial assistance
2. Outstanding loan balances are considered an asset of the trust, even though the money is actually not in their possession. Much like a 401(k) plan, outstanding loan balances are included in the total assets, as if they money was still there, because it’s expected to be repaid. Only when a loan is defaulted upon is it reported as an actual expense. Considering the increase in aid given over the past few years, this fact alone explains the increase in “cash” reserves. It’s simple accounting that AP doesn’t seem to understand.
3. Current investment capital available for grants and loans fluctuates between $190-$200 million, depending on the day and how well the market is doing. Donn says that the fund swelled to $345 million between 2003-2007, and perhaps at one point it was… but it’s not now. The trust is not sitting idly. In order to be a good steward of the money, it’s invested, awaiting distribution to soldiers and their families.
4. During the period in question, the AER distributed nearly twice as much in aid as they received in donations and loan repayments.

In From the Cold:

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, it should. In December 2007, the Washington Post ran a similar piece on a wider range of military charities. But the conclusions were strikingly similar, and the AP tracked down some of the same critics contacted by the Post, including Daniel Borochoff, President of the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP). We should note that the Post article was based on a report from Borochoff’s organization.

But that assessment also revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of how the AER–and its Air Force and Navy counterparts–operate. In his 2007 report, Mr. Borochoff wondered why the charities didn’t spend more money on homeless veterans. Apparently, he didn’t understand there are virtually no homeless among the groups served by these charities–active-duty military personnel, retirees and their families.

The irony in this story is almost unbearable.

The Associated Press on Friday suspended the use of photos provided by the Defense Department after the Army distributed a digitally altered photo of the U.S. military’s first female four-star general.

The image of Army Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody is the second Army-provided photo the AP has eliminated from its service in the last two months.

The AP said that adjusting photos and other imagery, even for aesthetic reasons, damages the credibility of the information distributed by the military to news organizations and the public.

“For us, there’s a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting actual content from an image,” said Santiago Lyon, the AP’s director of photography.

Las Vegas Sun

You don’t crop photos? You don’t alter brightness, contrast or color balance? You don’t publish photos provided to you without any investigation.

Oh, that last one, you do.

Well, they started with Drudge [my bad, it's a parody site called Drudge Retort]. It seems that they object to his brief, 50-100 word, teases quoted from their stories.

And they say:

All requests for republication of AP material must be in writing, clearly stating the purpose and manner in which the material will be used. All republished material must carry AP credit. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all permission is given for one-time use only. No political candidate, political party, political action committee, polemical organization, or any group formed for partisan purpose may use AP copy in any publication. There may be a fee for reprint use.

There is something in copyright law called “fair use”.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

In practice, quoting a small portion of a news story, with a link to the full story is the common and generally accepted blogging practice.

AP has a problem. Various media sources have advanced claims that AP routinely publishes as its own work material that it has taken from existing, copyrighted sources within the media.

The blogger called Patterico, an assistant DA in Los Angeles, has found that they used content from his blog, clearly copyright protected and the product of his own reporting efforts. In his post, he reports on several bloggers who are billing AP for copyrighted material they believe AP stole from them.