Voters can uncover a crucial clue by checking how Donald Trump’s 28-point action plan at Gettysburg was reported by AP.

In Sherlock Holmes’s Adventure of Silver Blaze, a dog that didn’t bark in the night provided the case-solving crucial clue.

On Friday night, the Associated Press advised local editors that Donald Trump would “outline what his priorities would be during his first 100 days in office and again lay out his differences with Clinton.”

Then, the next day, in place of reporting, the AP kept silent – like the dog that didn’t bark – substituting entertainment for news:

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Donald Trump on Saturday pledged postelection lawsuits against every woman who has accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, and he charged Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party with orchestrating the allegations.

Buried 18 column inches in and 13 paragraphs later, the AP gave lip service to Trump’s plan, listing a few of the 28 points. The AP glossed over Trump’s six measures to clean up corruption, seven actions to protect American workers, five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law, and ten broader legislative matters to work with Congress to achieve.

“News” is what readers need to know to plan their future. What the AP led with was true, but not news. What the AP reported will occur regardless of election results. Leading with noise, the AP pulled the hunting dogs off the scent by dragging a bagged rabbit across the foxhunt trail.

Dozens of times, the AP has planted Improvised Editing Devices – IEDs – to explode into misleading narratives for local news editors to publish and readers to read.

Earlier this month, the AP criticized a Trump tweet for not substantiating a claim with evidence. The AP knows that little “evidence” can be packed into a 140-character tweet. The AP knows that substantial evidence was reported elsewhere. Reporters who feign ignorance of other evidence aren’t reporters, but advocates.

The AP’s habit of judging the success or failure of debates or campaigns, quoting polls absent the selection process/weighting, or forecasting the likelihood of some result masks misleading opinion and conjecture as news.

The AP buries important news below trivial noise, inserts unnecessary adjectives to support or denigrate what is said, dampens candidate remarks by inserting hearsay and opinion after a statement, dredges up past comments by known shills, and ignores evidence it doesn’t care to report.

Dozens of “IEDs”? As James Bond villain Auric Goldfinger said, “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but a third time is enemy action.”

The AP deflects criticism by saying its reporters receive complaints from both sides. That kind of rhetorical game-playing reveals that they believe that not reporting something is reporting it and burying important news under irrelevancies is credible journalism.

The AP is no longer the consortium of independent newspapers it was a hundred years ago. It used to be subject to scrutiny by feisty, scrupulously independent local newspaper publishers. Now large corporate members control the AP. When the AP executives say, “But you own us,” the theory is far away from practice. The lone board seat reserved for smaller member newspapers goes to chain owners that may own one small newspaper.

When Associated Press journalists and editors can add “two plus two” but choose not to, then the real news is that they have been caught spreading compost on weeds.

Stephen Waters is publisher of the Daily Sentinel in Rome, N.Y.