The AP's ridiculously inaccurate attack on the Clinton Foundation

In this Facebook Live Election Update, AMERICAblog editor John Aravosis talks about the Associated Press' erroneous attack on the Clinton Foundation and then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Facebook Live videos are square, just fyi.)

Much more background on this issue here

And feel free to sign this petition calling on AP to fix it errorriddled story

Here's a bit more background on the story:

The Associated Press is refusing to correct an outright lie they published about Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, putting the lives of 11.5m people with AIDS at risk.

AP claimed that "more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to the Clinton Foundation." That's a lie. We know it's a lie because of what the AP said next: "At least 85 of 154 people who met or had phone conversations with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state donated or pledged commitments to her family charity."

Sounds damning, until you think about it. AP wants you to believe that in the four years that Hillary was secretary of state she only had 154 phone calls and meetings? Really? That would mean she had at most one phone call or meeting every ten days. What was she doing the other 9 days, playing Pinochle with all the other bored cabinet secretaries?

In fact, Hillary Clinton had thousands of meetings and phone calls as secretary of state from 2009 until 2013. What the AP published was an outright lie, at best sloppy, and at worst intended to smear Hillary Clinton and the good works of the Clinton Foundation.

And there's a second problem with the AP story. Even among the 85 Clinton Foundation donors who met Hillary, or spoke with her by phone, the AP couldn't find one who got any special favors in response. The big "smoking gun" that AP found, and devoted 1/3 of their article to, was Muhammad Yunus, the man who has done the most to fight global poverty alive today, and who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his innovative and effective micro-lending strategies. Call me crazy, but I think a Nobel Peace Prize winner in international development can get a meeting with the Secretary of State regardless of whether he supported the Clinton Foundation's charity work.

Another big donor who got a meeting with Secretary Clinton is Melinda Gates, head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Clearly Melinda Gates could meet with any cabinet secretary she wants, whenever she wants, regardless of any donations. And there's one more big-name donor to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was secretary: Donald Trump. Was Trump seeking illegal influence as well? No word from AP on that one.

The AP's smear is now being used by critics of the Clinton Foundation to demand that it be shut down immediately. That would take life-savings AIDS medication away from 11.5 million people, including 800,000 children and half the adults on HIV-medication worldwide. This isn't just an academic debate. The AP's egregious violation of journalistic ethics is putting real lives at risk. It must be corrected now.

Join us in publicly demanding that the Associated Press correct this terribly incorrect and harmful story.