AP Reporter and Editor Who Muffed Terry McAuliffe Story Lose Jobs

Tuesday updates:  Wash Post asks if punishment fit the crime here.  Points out no one fired over misreporting on, say, Iraq, Katrina, and on and on.   I'd caution:  we don't know details on this case, how and why APers screwed up.  Could be a ticking time bomb.

Mike Calderone reports that a third APer has been fired, which has the Guild alarmed -- but also makes you wonder what happened that went beyond usual such screw-up.  Truth will be interesting. 

You remember that horrid incident a couple weeks back where the AP got a story terribly wrong about Terry McAuliffe, frontrunner in the current governor's race in Virginia.  I predicted at the time that the reporter, veteran Bob Lewis,  might well lose his job and it happened today apparently.  McAuliffe's team was quick to say they did not call for this and felt it was water under the bridge.  UPDATE:  An AP editor was also canned. 

In the article, which the AP retracted less than two hours after it was published Oct. 9, Lewis reported McAuliffe may have “lied to a federal official” looking into the candidate’s investment ties with  known felon. As it turned out, the “T.M.” referenced in the documents did not stand for Terry McAuliffe.