Earlier this week, a coworker sent me a link to what I presume must have been a fun or interesting tweet. I will never know for sure, however, because the only thing that link taught me was that nothing is sacred. Not even curated feeds of up-to-the-minute entertainment and celebrity news.

Earlier this week, a coworker sent me a link to what I presume must have been a fun or interesting tweet. I will never know for sure, however, because the only thing that link taught me was that nothing is sacred. Not even curated feeds of up-to-the-minute entertainment and celebrity news.

Apropos of nothing, the Associated Press called the Democratic primary race for Hillary Clinton on Monday night, declaring her “the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on the eve of Tuesday’s voting.” The news agency cited a survey of super-delegates, who do not actually vote until the convention.

According to an Associated Press report, Ferguson, Mo., officials are apparently using exorbitant fees to discourage news organizations from requesting documents through the state's freedom-of-information Sunshine Law.

The Associated Press Twitter account is a must-follow for breaking-news junkies. It's also a great guide to the many ways you can fuck up breaking news. Like when it reported the status this morning of an aircraft carrying the bodies of MH17 victims back to Holland:

Big victory for ecumenical proponents of gay marriage. Also, big reminder from the AP that phrasing makes all the difference.

Unfortunately, the tweet, taken from this Instagram, was deleted a few minutes after it went up. Too bad.

The Associated Press announced Wednesday that it had parted ways with Narciso Contreras, a freelance photographer who shared in a Pulitzer for his work in Syria last year. The reason Contreras was let go, basically, is that he tried too hard to meet a phony news-photo standard.

ABC News and The New York Times have known since 2007 that Robert Levinson, the ex-FBI agent who was kidnapped in Iran, was not, as the U.S. government and his family claimed, an independent businessman: He was working for the CIA. The Times’ report today discloses this timeline; ABC News’ report does not—but a source at the network confirmed to Gawker that ABC reporters discovered the CIA connection in 2007 as well. At the request of the government and Levinson’s family, however, both outlets repeatedly stated, without any caveats, that Levinson was on a “business trip” when he was captured. A review of their coverage indicates that ABC News did so at least 7 times, and the Times at least 3 times.

Associated Press: "NIN closed the night with a slow and smoky cover of Johnny Cash's 'Hurt,' which earned nonstop cheers from the crowd."

After the Justice Department responded tersely to an AP letter questioning the government's decision to seize its phone records, the wire service has published a new letter saying the DoJ's explanation "does not adequately address our concerns."

The Associated Press found itself in an interesting predicament today when it was forced to report that the Justice Department surreptitiously obtained two months of its own employees' phone records.

A hacker briefly shook the world today by cracking into the Associated Press' official Twitter feed and sharing this. The account was swiftly suspended as AP employees sheepishly assured everyone it was a hack.

Yesterday, the Associated Press released a story that soberly chronicled some of the deaths caused by gun violence on a single day in America. The single, typical day was January 19th, which as the article states, was the beginning of the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, as well as the weekend of the presidential inauguration. However, more importantly, it was also the inaugural "Gun Appreciation Day" as David Waldman points out. It's hard to believe that it could be a simple coincidence that the AP chose "Gun Appreciation Day" to highlight the deaths caused by that so worthy of appreciation.

From the Associated Press today, a bizarre memo that specifies the terms "husband" and "wife" are to be used to refer to heterosexual couples only. The initial memo, posted first by Romanesko Romenesko, reads:

In an Associated Press article from earlier this month, national affairs writer Jesse Washington posed the question, "Does racial bias fuel Obama foes?" "The question of whether race fuels opposition to President Barack Obama has become one of the most divisive topics of the election," Washington continued. "It is sowing anger and frustration among conservatives who are labeled racist simply for opposing Obama's policies and liberals who see no other explanation for such deep dislike of the president."

The Associated Press profile of future President of the Milky Way Galaxy Lori Anne Madison who, at 6 years old, is the youngest person ever to gain entrance into the Scripps National Spelling Bee, is charming in that it finds her bounding around a nature preserve in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. searching for snails, slugs, tadpoles, and the like.

There are so many excellent ways that the Associated Press could investigate Ron Paul, given his long congressional record and status as a competitive major party presidential candidate with views radically outside the mainstream, something you don't see too often. He's a character, a real life political character. But what the AP has chosen to go with today is a report about how he frequently flies first-class between Washington and his Texas district, making him the worst sort of hypocrite who has no values and loves Big Government deficits, secretly.

A sharp-eyed user of the social news site Reddit spotted this giant among the bystanders during Kim Jong-Il's funeral procession. Is this a genetically-modified superwarrior, or just a famous North Korean basketball player? (Click the photo to enlarge.)

A Pakistani woman with a Burberry purse photographed her daughter beside the gate to Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound today. An Associated Press photographer captured the moment.