From the conclusion of her Friday Townhall column:
This is not a one-time transgression or a harmless rumor. This is indicative of a pattern, which is indicative of untold numbers of inaccuracies that were never caught, rumors that were never stopped, sources that were never verified. Each one of those has had a part, however miniscule, in forming the narrative of the war in Iraq and the greater War on Terror. That narrative has shaped public opinion in Iraq, the U.S., and around the world. That public opinion may end up playing a hand in whether we win or lose in that theater.
Reporters are fond of thinking they can change the world. They should really double-check all their sources before they go trying.
Who is Capt. Jamil Hussein? Keep asking that question. Getting the answer right matters a great deal. You’d think reporters would understand that.
Oh, they understand very well, MKH, especially the “win or lose” part. The WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, formerly known as the Mainstream Media) want the false narrative to be the first one that hits the streets, even if it takes questionable sources and/or anonymous sources to make it happen. The WORMs know that the corrective narratives, if they even occur at all, barely matter, because the vast majority of readers, listeners, and viewers will never see, hear, or be aware of them.
Mitchell Langbert at Democracy Project celebrates Flopping Aces’ and others’ success at exposing the Associated Press’s treachery with Jamil Hussein as “changing history.” Maybe, but I think it’s more likely the second shot (the fauxtography tussle was the first) in a long-running battle between the Army of Davids and the monopolistic and biased status quo. It’s not at all clear to me who will have the upper hand several years from now.
ALSO #1: Flopping Aces noted AP trending towards anonymous sources over the weekend, thus enablng the avoidance of those pesky bloggers and occasionally peskier folks from the military questioning sources; Gateway Pundit also caught AP’s continued use of sources the military has specifically identified as non-credentialed.
ALSO #2: Over the weekend, Ray Robison found disturbing evidence that the Associated Press is sharing writers and/or sources with Al Jazeera.
REMINDER: Robison’s discovery should not at all surprise BizzyBlog readers who recall the post containing info that originated at Little Green Footballs. It detailed how the Associated Press, Associated Press Television News (APTN), and likely other news organizations are being paid extra to give special treatment and spin to Arab-, Palestinian-, and Muslim-related stories by Arab-state paymasters. If you haven’t read it, go there and you’ll understand why you simply cannot take any news out of the Middle East at face value (just one recent example: Gateway Pundit notes the pro-terror spin from Lebanon — “Lebanese democratically elected government = Western (US) backed Government”). If there was ever any naive hope that Iraq might be an exception, those hopes have clearly been dashed.
ALSO #3: Be careful what you wish for, WORMs. James Whetzel at American Thinker notes that there are costs outside of Iraq, even to a supposedly important liberal cause (George Clooney, please note) — “The conflict in Darfur is abhorrent and tragic; however, that tragedy is compounded by the fact that the United States has lost the will to act in the face of tyrants, dictators, and thugs, not because we are soft as a people, but because the media has so distorted the truth and sided with our enemies it has become almost impossible to win, even if we do.”
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UPDATE: The New York Times’ Tom Zeller Jr. circled the wagons in an article for today’s paper published online Sunday –
….. Then there was The Associated Press itself, which by Friday had come to view the continued scrutiny of its article as evidence that everyone — the military, the blogosphere, even other media outlets tracking the back-and-forth — was either agenda-driven, insolent, or both, but not legitimately curious.
….. It is also true that the institution conducting America’s multibillion gamble in Iraq — the military — says that this standout of atrocities never happened, while a venerable, trusted news agency has twice interviewed witnesses who said, in extensive, vivid detail, that it did.
Sorry, Mr. Zeller, AP, et al. Just off the top of my head, I am “legitimately curious” why “Jamil Hussein” stays in the shadows, why no one can name or produce the five of six who allegedly died, why the morgue is said to have no records of these deaths, why no one can find any relatives of the five to talk to, and why there is apparently no local news coverage naming the dead to cite. And I am “legitimately curious” as to why an allegedly “venerable, trusted” news agency that can’t or won’t answer these simple questions has any right to claim more credibility than the military, where people who commit dishonest acts receive disciplinary action instead of Pulitzers.
Oh, and Zeller, just a few days earlier, had this from the Times’ Baghdad correspondent Edward Wong, who, as Zeller noted, “was unable to substantiate the burning incident for his Saturday story”:
We reached several people who told us about the mosque attacks, but said they had heard nothing of Sunni worshippers being burned alive. ….. Such an incident would have been so abominable that a great many of the residents in Hurriya, as well as in other Sunni Arab districts, would have been in an uproar over it. Hard-line Sunni Arab organizations such as the Muslim Scholars Association or the Iraqi Islamic Party would almost certainly have appeared on television that day or the next to denounce this specific incident. Iraqi clerics and politicians are not shy about doing this. Yet, as far as I know, there was no widespread talk of the incident. So I mentioned it only in passing in my report.
I think I’m supposed to read Zeller’s latest as a self-admission that the Times and Wong are less “venerable and trusted” than AP — stunning indeed. (I just left a comment at Zeller’s “The Lede” blog — “Three days later, Wong’s circumstantial reasons for questioning whether the incident happened still stand: the lack of residents in an ‘uproar’ on the streets and the lack TV opportunism by the Muslim Scholars Association. How can that be if the incident really took place?”)
Allah at Hot Air has similar thoughts and questions.
Blue Crab Boulevard makes a great point — Referring to the AP’s assertion to the Times in a face-to-face interview (that “to engage these questions — to continue to write about them — merely fueled a mad blog rabble that would never be satisfied.”): “Notice how the AP tries to stifle even the Times’ reporting ….?” Message to the rest of the press: Don’t cover this.
Patterico — “Apparently it never occurred to either of these stellar journalists that there is, in fact, one thing the AP could do — but, notably, hasn’t. And that is to produce Jamil Hussein.”
Curt at Flopping Aces — “The Iraqi’s (sic) set up a unit so that the press could be assured that the official spokesmen that these reporters like to quote so much are in fact who they say they are. What’s absurd is the notion that this wrong and somehow restricting their freedoms. Is it too much to ask that the media quote REAL police officers?” Apparently — no point in letting the legitimacy of sources, or lack of evidence that it even happened, get in the way of a good story.
Jawa Report — “….. the New York Times is vastly more concerned with the freedom of reporters to report, than the actual accuracy of those reports.”
Michelle Malkin — “….. lack of transparency, disclosure, reliability, and credibility is at the heart of the war coverage controversy the MSM doesn’t want to confront.”
Outside the Beltway — “Given that AP has had numerous problems with international stringers in recent months, one would think they would turn over ever stone to answer these questions. Plenty of once-venerable, once-trusted institutions have lost their credibility with repeated violations of their trust.”
UPDATE, 1:30 PM: Hot Air has video of Crittenden on Fox News this morning. Don’t know whether he was up against a hard break or not, but Cincinnati area native Bill Hemmer, who was with CNN for many years, seemed to cut Crittenden off pretty quickly when Crittenden tried to move into the larger and more fundamental problems with AP. And assuming he read Crittenden’s op-ed piece, Hemmer seems to have consciously avoided allowing time for the bigger arguments about pervasive bias.
UPDATE, 11:45 PM: Dan Riehl notices that Time Magazine couldn’t confirm the AP’s work, and that even Al Jazeera didn’t report on the Burning Six. Wow.
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Previous Posts:
- Nov. 30 — Tonight’s Jamil ‘Captain Tuttle’ Hussein and AP (Always Paranoid) Update
- Nov. 30 — Jamil Hussein Update
- Nov. 29 — Burning Six Update: Michelle Malkin Sums It Up
- Nov. 27 — The Burning Question (Figuratively and Literally): Is Reliance on Bogus and Compromised News Sources Slanting Iraq Coverage?