The Associated Press on Monday fired a national security reporter who had provided information for a story that inaccurately suggested Russia launched a missile strike on Poland last week.
LaPorta’s firing was first reported Monday evening by the Daily Beast.
LaPorta declined to comment. A former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan, he joined AP in April 2020 after several years as a freelance reporter. He covered military affairs and national security issues for the news service.Officials at the Associated Press declined to identify LaPorta as the source of the alert.
Internal AP communications viewed by The Post show some confusion and misunderstanding during the preparations of the erroneous report. LaPorta shared the U.S. official’s tip in an electronic message around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. An editor immediately asked if AP should issue an alert on his tip, “or would we need confirmation from another source and/or Poland?”After further discussion, a second editor said she “would vote” for publishing an alert, adding, “I can’t imagine a U.S. intelligence official would be wrong on this.”
But a person at the Associated Press familiar with the larger conversations surrounding the story that day said LaPorta also told his editors that a senior manager had already vetted the source of LaPorta’s tip — leaving the impression that the story’s sourcing had been approved. While that editor had signed off on previous stories using LaPorta’s source, that editor had not weighed in on the missile story.
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