The AP Says Failure To Credit OutKick For Justin Tucker Reporting Was an ‘Oversight’
The Associated Press said it did not mean to not credit OutKick when it wrote an entire story around the exclusive statements Ravens kicker Justin Tucker and his wife Amanda provided us.
On Wednesday, we reported on the allegations against Tucker, in which a total of 16 massage therapists accused the kicker of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior during sessions from 2012 to 2016 in the Baltimore area.
"I maintain I did not act inappropriately at any point before, during, or after a professional bodywork treatment session, nor have I ever been told I am unwelcome at any massage therapy provider. These claims are simply not true," Tucker told OutKick in a statement, the full text of which can be found below.
Given that this was Tucker's first public statement to a media outlet since the accusations surfaced in January, nearly every sports outlet cited the comments—including ESPN, which credited OutKick for the first time in company history.
In fact, the AP was among the first outlets to cover Tucker's comments. But unlike most other outlets, the AP did not bother to mention from which outlet it saw and pulled the statement.
Now, journalism is a dirty game. This is not an industry of honesty and ethics (imagine that). Still, the AP seemingly going out of its way to not credit OutKick provided a good opportunity to jab the wire service, one that deserves a good mocking for its dishonest coverage of the Trump administration.
So, I posted the following on X:
The @AP wrote an entire story tonight around Justin Tucker's exclusive statement to @OutKick , but never once credited where they pulled the statement. What will happen first: The AP says the word "OutKick" or "Gulf of America"?
It turns out, the AP chose to say "OutKick" before "Gulf of America."
According to Awful Announcing, the AP updated its story after my X post: "Burack called attention to the AP’s omission via social media late Wednesday night. At 10:16 p.m. ET on Thursday, the Associated Press updated its story to credit OutKick."
An AP spokesperson provided Awful Announcing the following statement: "This was an oversight. We updated the story to note that OutKick first reported Justin Tucker’s new statement."
We were actually the only site to "report" the statement, but sure.
As OutKick founder Clay Travis noted on his livestream Thursday, the number of "oversights" that negatively impact OutKick is starting to add up.
In October, we learned that Facebook had blocked three of our exclusive interviews with Donald Trump. Those who tried to share the interviews were met with the following message, claiming the video violated Meta's Community Standards:
Days later, Meta told us it didn't mean to suppress our interviews with Trump, blaming the issue on a coding "error."
What was the "error?" We asked Meta for a specific explanation of what prevented users from sharing the interviews. After much back-and-forth, Meta finally said, "Their system was having issues with some links generated by third-party URL shorteners."
Got it.
For years, OutKick stories didn't even appear on Google, despite drawing enough traffic and paying for such eligibility. Clay said that once he sold OutKick to Fox Corp. in 2021, he asked the Fox engineers to investigate why that was. Google said there was an "indexing error" with our site, preventing it from appearing on Google News.
Hmm.
For some reason, all the "errors" keep going against OutKick.
We just want to live on the internet where all "errors" are distributed equally, and the Gulf of America is recognized fully.