Apparently, whoever prepares the final copies at the Associated Press got a little sloppy yesterday.
The Associated Press article that was sent out at 3:25 pm to various outlets probably confused anyone who read it, since the headline contradicted the lead sentence in the article:
Psychiatrist: Mother wasn’t sane when she killed autistic daughter
Jan 15, 2008 @ 03:25 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESSPEKIN – A psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution says a central Illinois woman accused of suffocating her autistic daughter was sane at the time of the 3-year-old’s death. (empasis added)
It looks like this was probably the result of a sloppy “cut and paste” operation. The AP often “recycles” text from one ongoing story into another later story. In this case, it looks like they lifted the previous day’s headline. The day before, an expert witness for the defense did testify that Karen McCarron was insane when she killed Katie McCarron.
Tip to AP – before sending out articles out on the wire it would be a good idea to have someone read the article and make sure the headline and the article actually match.
It looks like the AP caught its goof and has sent out a “fix” to outlets that received the article with the glitchy headline. In almost every case, the offending article now has an appropriate article or the link is now dead. However, here’s one outlet that shows the article as it originally went out.
Guess they didn’t get the memo. –Stephen Drake