Having been in media for years I can vouch for AP's credibility; it would not transmit something with made-up facts. It's a very conservative organization in the non-political use of the word.
One night CNN was claiming that coal miners had been found alive, while AP saw the crawler but held out for official confirmation. The miners had been found ... dead. Rumors had reached the surface that they were alive.
Almost every morning newspaper in the country went with the "miners found alive" story. I refused to paste anything on to the page because it was unresolved at 2 a.m. (A very annoying copy editor said to pick one story or the other, but I'd rather run blank newsprint than a factually untrue story).
AP has done some comprehensive database investigation; it bends over backward to be fair and it HATES to be wrong. I don't make the same claim about NBC.