Associated Press Promote A Tone-Deaf Cash Grab In A Now Deleted Tweet

The Associated Press Thursday morning tweet promoting an NFT version of a video of an overloaded ship of refugees in the Mediterranean drew harsh condemnation for its insensitivity.

Twitter users slammed it as “beyond the realms of propriety,” “pitiful and disgusting,” and “monetizing human agony is cruel.” The tweet has been live for several hours.

“The Associated Press has deleted a tweet advertising an NFT that sure looked a whole lot like an attempt to make money off the plight of desperate migrants,” wrote the behavioural scientist Caroline Orr Bueno on Twitter.

Associated Press said it was a “poor choice”

After the backlash, the organization has deleted the tweet and cancelled the planned sale.

Late Thursday, an Associated Press representative sent the following comment to TheWrap: “This was an unsuitable photograph for an NFT. Also, AP’s NFT marketplace is still in its early stages, and we are constantly analyzing our efforts. The purpose of the Associated Press is to provide the world with accurate, unbiased journalism. That is still our key concern.”

“This is so far beyond the bounds of appropriate,” wrote John Stanton, editor of the New Orleans news outlet Gambit. “How did this get all the way to execute without a single journo saying something,” asked another journalist, SI Rosenbaum.

In January, the AP’s NFT marketplace went live. One of the first NFTs was a 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. The photograph depicts a Jewish settler confronting Israeli security personnel in the West Bank.

Nowadays, alternative revenue streams are critical for news organizations competing for advertising dollars with Google and Facebook. For instance, New York Times has sold copies of its stories as NFTs, while the Guardian, like the New York Times, sells some of its photos through an online store.

However, the photographs available tend to be of a lighter nature, such as the arts, music, and cityscapes.