Apparently, the AP may have dipped into Lexis-Nexis, too. Reader Gary writes in that the first AP version of the “booing” story appeared not, as I had previously written, at 2:12 p.m. with the Tom Hays story, but at 1:57 p.m. with an un-bylined short report. The AP has taken this report down, but Boston.com still has it up, for now.

As of last night, this version of the story which Boston.com has, had been stricken from Nexis, and the first instance of the “booing” report was in the longer Hays piece from 2:12 p.m. Perhaps Hays simply appropriated the reporting from the earlier item. We have no way of knowing unless the AP comes out and tells us.

This morning, the AP is moving to further cover its tracks. The Hays story from Nexis which I posted last night has been removed from Lexis-Nexis altogether. Now, the first mention of President Bush’s remarks about President Clinton’s health comes in the form of this entry which has no byline and no time-stamp:

Copyright 2004 Associated Press

September 3, 2004 Friday

SECTION: NATIONAL POLITICAL NEWS

LENGTH: 185 words

HEADLINE: Bush Offers Best Wishes for Clinton

DATELINE: WEST ALLIS, Wis.

President Bush on Friday offered former President Bill Clinton, who faces heart bypass surgery, “best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery.”

“He is in our thoughts and prayers,” Bush said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin.

The crowd reacted with applause and with some “ooohs,” apparently surprised by the news that Clinton was ill.

Later, aboard Air Force One, Bush called Clinton to express his concern for his heart problems, according to presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

The president told Clinton that he and the first lady were praying for him and wished him a “speedy recovery,” McClellan said.

Bush offered his wishes while campaigning one day after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Clinton was hospitalized in New York after complaining of mild chest pain and shortness of breath.

Bush recently praised Clinton when the former president went to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait. He lauded Clinton for his knowledge, compassion and “the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president.”

First of all, good for the AP for fixing the faulty reporting and including what seems to be an accurate description of the Republican crowd’s reaction to bad news about President Clinton’s health.

But the AP’s conduct with regards to the rest of this story is not reassuring. We have an un-bylined bit of faulty reporting which was incorporated into the bylined work of another reporter without accreditation. After being confronted by the blogosphere, the AP pulled versions of the bad reporting from the web and the first instance of it from Lexis-Nexis. After it was revealed here at Galley Slaves that the bad reporting lived on in other versions of the story in Nexis, the AP went into Nexis and disappeared it from there, too. Then, they inserted a cleaned-up version with no time-stamp whatsoever. By the time media reporters like Jim Romenesko and Howard Kurtz and Jack Shafer get back to the office on Tuesday, there will be no story, because the AP will have completely altered all of the evidence.

In fact, as it stands right now, the only evidence that the AP ever made this enormous error is on blogs, such as this one, which copied the offending stories–remember, Lexis-Nexis does not page-cache the way Google does.

The AP’s conduct reminds me of the famous Soviet picture of the Bolshevik leaders sitting on the couch. It began with the entire high command, and over the years, as individuals fell out of favor and were disappeared, was airbrushed over and over until, in the end, it showed only Lenin and Stalin, who were mysteriously seated on opposite ends of an enormous sofa.

For its own good, the Associated Press should not be allowed to get away with this. It’s a fine and valuable media institution. Mistakes get made all the time. There’s nothing particularly damning about a reporting screw-up. But this cover-up casts real doubt on their organizational judgment and ethics.

If this AP report is true, then it’s just shameful. I’ll keep an eye out for the pool report to get the full story.

Let’s all pray for a speedy recovery for Clinton. I hope that for years to come President Clinton can joke about how, back in 2004, Zell Miller nearly gave him a heart attack.

UPDATE: Swimming Through the Spin says not so fast. Maybe Republicans were behaving like solid citizens. Where’s my faithful pool when I need him?

(Still, I hope Clinton gets to use the joke . . .)

UPDATE II: Reader D.B. writes in, “Factor that into your old media/new media debate. Bottom line – with the new media, the truth will out.” Ouch! Half-point: New Media.

UPDATE III: Powerline is all over this story too, and it has the feel of a genuine scandal. You can find the audio of the president’s speech here.

It sound to me like the crowd became silent when Bush mentioned Clinton’s condition and then erupted in lusty cheers when the Bush said that Clinton was in everyone’s “hearts and prayers” and that he was sending everyone’s “best wishes.” If this audio is indicative of what happened, then this isn’t a case of the AP making a mistake–they have deliberately distorted the news in a manner for which there is no reasonable explanation.

What makes this story particularly important right now is that America just had a look into the heart of the left-wing. The manner in which a great many of the liberal protesters comported themselves in New York was truly beyond the pale: Cursing, threatening, harassing, and sometimes actually assaulting anyone whom they believed might be a Republican delegate, even in front of children and families.

The small, personal, one-on-one interactions I saw in New York astonished me, and, I bet jarred anyone who read about them.

Coming less than 24 hours after the close the Republican convention, the AP story seems as though it was designed for one purpose alone: To try and convince readers that Republicans are just as rude and repugnant as the Democratic protesters recently on display in New York.

Make no mistake, if that crowd did boo Bush’s good wishes for President Clinton, then it’s a disgusting display of rank partisanship over decency and the good will which makes democracy work.

But if the AP has distorted the crowd’s reaction as boldly as the available evidence now suggests, then this is a media scandal of the first-rate. The AP should be made to answer for this.

President Bush’s speech was generally successful, if somewhat disposable. It did what he needed it to do. But he left out two topics which would have made it better, and which could only have helped his election chances.

(1) Abu Ghraib: There was no mention of the subject which gummed up the works in Iraq for so long. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not an earth-shaking scandal, but it is important, and by talking about it, Bush could have shown how American ideals are just that–values that even we sometimes fail to live up to. He could have shown serious moral purpose by confronting Abu Ghraib in his speech, and he would have been able to further honor the hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq who have conducted themselves with nothing but courage and dignity.

(2) The nature of our enemies. John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Ron Silver all gave speeches that were remarkable in the clarity of their language. They explained that we are engaged in a war between Islamist extremists and western civilization. This is not a conflict simply between America and some faceless, evil terrorists. Our enemies have a coherent ideology and goal. They do not simply “hate freedom.” It goes much deeper than that.

The problem with couching the current conflict in the terms Bush prefers is that their ambiguity lends them to misuse. It becomes easy for those who wish us to appease the Islamists to simply declare that this is a war between America and Islam, and that America is at least partially at fault.

President Bush should have spoken about the nature of the terrorists, about who they are and what they believe. He should have listed the countries where they have recently plied their bloody trade: America, Israel, Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines. He should have pointed to Russia, where Islamist terrorists have struck again and again, and last night were holding a school full of children hostage.

This war is bigger than America–it is truly a global war. Our enemies understand that. And it would have been helpful to our body politic for the president to say so.

Early reports out of Beslan, Russia, are grim: At least one hundred bodies have supposedly been found in the school gymnasium as the stand-off between Chechen rebels and Russian authorities comes to an end. The bloody conclusion to this conflict is all too reminiscent of the last hostage crisis at the Moscow theater in 2002, in which 129 hostages died in the aftermath of the raid by special forces. Showtime’s documentary of that tragedy, Terror in the Aisles, which I reviewed for The Daily Standard, is a horrific but important look at what exactly the Russians are facing.

My piece on President Bush’s speech is up now.

Wouldn’t it have been great if Mary Lou Retton had come out carrying Kerri Strug?

Terry Eastland has just come back from doing a spot on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and he’s convinced that Hugh is running for president in 2016. Terry’s theory is that Hugh will have a California base, which makes him a formidable conservative, and then will be buttressed by his Northern, South Dakota, and Rocky Mountain alliances. (Not to mention the Hewitt Progeny.)

I’m not convinced–Hugh’s too kind to go into politics. But it does bring up a question: Who will be the first Internet star to succeed in politics?

From some nice fellow named Ken Layne:

I grew up in the South, surrounded by sons of bitches like Zell Miller — bitter old nigger-haters who couldn’t possibly understand why they weren’t right about anything — and this dixiecrat piece of shit is probably the best advertisement for the Bush Administration’s Compassionate Conservatism we’ve ever seen. Thank you, Zell. Now we understand. Sorry about wishing the Bush Administration all the best after 9/11. Sorry I ever entertained the thought that these vicious pigs might find redemption in defending our country with honor.

I’ll say it again: Give me Paul Krugman, William Raspberry, Richard Cohen, Rik Hertzberg, et al any day of the week. The triumph of the new media continues.