It already has a name - DeCapiGate.
I'm not Associated Press reporter Sinan Salheddin, nor am I Kim Gamel, AP's Baghdad news editor, but if I was investigating a story about a 20-corpse mass murder in—let's say, Manhattan—then I'd try to find a local police officer at the scene to interview about the case.I wouldn't rely on a desk sergeant in Staten Island who merely heard reports of other officers being dispatched to check to see if there was such a crime, nor would I rely on a beat cop in Albany who is only reporting rumors of what he heard from friends of relatives in Queens.
But the Associated Press didn't rely on the local police. Instead, they blatantly presented hearsay as the truth, and as a result, ran a story about a brutal massacre that currently appears to have never taken place.
Greyhawk, via Instapundit;
I'm shocked - shocked I tell you, to read this. I haven't heard of such a thing since the last time the news reported a bogus headless bodies story.
Or the time before that.
On June 30th, the report was challenged.
June 30, 2007 Release A070630cExtremists using false media reporting to incite sectarian violence
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Friday, news media reported a mass killing in a village near Salman Pak where 20 men were allegedly found beheaded. It now appears that the story was completely false and fabricated by unknown sources.
Upon learning of the press reports, coalition and Iraqi officials began investigating to determine if the reports were true. Ultimately it was concluded the reports were false.
Anti-Iraqi Forces are known for purposely providing false information to the media to incite violence and revenge killings, and they may well have been the source of this misinformation.
“Extremists promote falsehoods of mass killings, collateral damage and other violence specifically to turn Iraqis against other Iraqis,” said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, spokesperson for MNF-I. “Unfortunately, lies are much easier to state, the truth often takes time to prove,” said Fox.
Not all media reports can be immediately substantiated by Government of Iraq or Coalition Forces. They must go through a process to verify such claims, to include checking with various Iraqi Ministry’s, local police and security forces. Meanwhile, extremists have achieved their goal of spreading false information aimed at intimidating civilians and destabilizing Iraqi security.
Ultimately, media reporting based on verifiable sources will reduce the possibility of misinformation unnecessarily alarming citizens.
I know you didn't learn this via the media that originally
AFP is one of few news services that has responded.
The US military accused the international media on Saturday of exacerbating Iraq's violent tensions by reporting false claims of massacres which it said were deliberately fabricated by extremist groups.This week several newspapers and agencies reported that Iraqi police had found 20 beheaded corpses in Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad.
AFP did not carry the report after its sources were unable to confirm the rumour.
While the Associated Press and their parrots in the mainstream media regurgitate second hand information from Iraqi "police" at locations more than an hour from the alleged crime scenes, freelance Iraq embed Michael Yon is delivering the goods on verifiable atrocities, supported entirely by his readers and out-performing them all. And he's totally ignored.
This is why people cancel subscriptions.
Update - Both AP and Reuters have now retracted the story, citing the usual excuse: "war reporting is hard". (Yes it is. See Michael Yon.)
Throughout the Iraq War, and with seemingly increasing frequency over the past year, these media outlets have become increasingly reliant upon anonymous sources and questionable sources hiding behind pseudonyms to deliver “news” with no apparent basis in fact.In some of these instances, these wire services have been forced to retract days later, as they have with the false Um al-Abeed beheading story. Sadly, the international and national news outlets that often carry the initial claims as “page one” material fail to do so with the refutations, leaving most media consumers with the impression that the original account was accurate.
Remarkably, these news organizations continue to employ the same reporters and editors that have published multiple erroneous or highly suspect claims, or who have consistently cited discredited or disreputable sources.
Further, these wire services continue to employ newsgathering techniques that rely upon anonymous sources with little or no direct involvement with the story being reported, and often publish these claims as absolute fact, without any indication they are publishing what is often, at best, hearsay.
The MNF-I refutation of the Um al-Abeed decapitation story states that the claim was “completely false and fabricated by unknown sources.”
That isn’t exactly true. Both Reuters and the Associated Press presumably know precisely who their sources were for this story, as they know who their sources were for other discredited stories.
They just as they certainly know, or should know, which of their indigenous reporters—”stringers,” in industry parlance—have been providing these suspect or discredited stories, and which editors have allowed these stories to press based upon the flimsiest of evidence, which often does not meet the service’s own stated reportorial standards.
To date, these wire services have consistently failed to visibly enforce standards of reporting, and in some instances, have promoted employees involved in using questionable sources and printing false claims. Once promoted, these same employees only further degrade editorial standards, leading to the public’s increasing distrust of these news organizations.
And deservedly so.
The problem with a first-rate fact-teller (I won't smear him by calling him a journalist) like Yon is that he not furthering the anti-bush, anti-american and anti-israel agenda that the media are propagating so they have no use for him.
The media have the money, power and people to get the facts right and they would if that was their goal. It's not.
It seems to me that of the Big Three (AP, AFP & Reuters) wire services, AP is actually the worst. I'm hard pressed to say which is the most biased but AP shows its true perfidiousness when caught.
Thank Blogs.
"I'm not Associated Press reporter Sinan Salheddin, nor am I Kim Gamel, AP's Baghdad news editor"......well, just looking at the names, what do you expect. You would think that after all of the past problems with local ME stringers falsifying photos and past stories, a major wire service would put some thought into the probable partiality of its employees.
False stories that go out on the wires not vetted are either the result of gross incompetence or deliberate intention. I'm picking the later.
Cummon if it's a slow news day you fill in the blanks with a thriller-chiller fiction that will scare the pants of the sheeples...that's what modern media is all about...info-tainment...hard to tell the hollywood from the news reports anymore
The Associated Press: Enabling terror-monkeys and sticking it to the (white) Man since 2001 (at least).
I watched a couple of these jokers defending their reporting on network TV this weekend.
They have no clue that they are doing anything wrong.
These people need and deserve to loose their jobs.
I suggest they set the fair and balanced Faux news team on the matter. The violence in Iraq is consistently exaggerated and if they could leave the green zone without being killed they would surely report it.
"This is why people cancel subscriptions."
In my case, 15 years ago.
Macleans, Wpg Free Press, Time, Time Canada, Scientific American, .......
It was bad enough that the media was intentionaly 'dumbing-down' the news ----- now they are also lying in their drive to be more biased.
It may be a slow process, therefore it will take some time to sort out, but in the end I believe the *bottom line* will prevail.
These organizations will wither on the vine as subscription levels decline and the ad revenues plummet as a result. Eventually there are going to be a mass of so-called journalists looking at career changes. As these *news* (sic) organizations move from their *Fall* to their *Winter* the ranks of "Previously-Owned Auto Salesmen" will grow accordingly.
Question is, would YOU purchase a car from a former *journalist*?
I don't even buy what they write. A car? /shudder
I'll bet these reporters are members of a union, eg, the 'Independent Association of Publisher's Employees'. That means that no matter how incompetent, no matter how biased their 'reports' - they can't be chasized, demoted or fired.
On FAUX NEWS I was able to observe the sanguine account of McCain's (and the 1st Armor Division's) sojourn in the Iraqi market, which evinced the truly halcyon nature of things.
This factitious event has convinced me of the falsity of all else. If I had any more faith I'd be a Christian.
That would explain it, ET.
To Warwick;
Yon does have a blog on Fox News - it's called "Dispatches from Iraq". I'm not sure how many people read it but it appears to be his normal view of things.
the same useful idiots who supported the Hisbollah media manipulation last year.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruption-of-media.html
Michael Yon is fantastic. Pat Dollard, Yoni, Bill Roggio to add a few more.
In keeping with the faux news theme: Islamic rage boy: Professional Protester, Jihadi-style
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/964-Professional-Protester,-Jihadi-style.html
AP, AFP, Reuter's, NYT, the Alphabet Channels are all out to destroy Western Culture.
It is deliberate, ain't no question about it anymore.
reporting of anything need not be fair and or balanced, it only needs to be accurate.
"reporting of anything need not be fair and or balanced, it only needs to be accurate.
Posted by: jmorrison at July 3, 2007 3:50 PM "
And yet they can't even get this basic fact right. But in fairness to most of the MSM, what they are reporting is accurate. Accurate enough to them to drive their destroy the West/Capitalism agenda. Accuracy of facts that go against their propaganda has no business showing up in their reporting, at least to their small leftard minds.
Yet more proof of MSM incompetence/corruption/fill in the blank...
The unreliability of the news reporting is increasing due to manufacturing.
From the article, it looks as though the report is from ‘somebody’.
Now if you get a whole bunch of ‘somebody’ somewhere, you can just pick the flavor that you prefer or that covers your agenda and go with it.
Trouble today is that you will run into some other body, like a blogger with little time on his hands and the manufactured story becomes a lie. A blogger will do this free of charge as opposed to the news manufacturers, who get paid thousands to sit on their hands and wait for ‘somebody’ to give them a story that sounds good to cover their agenda.
Question: Has Michael Yon ever posted a report that was critical of a US military action? If not, then he may be pursuing as partisan an agenda as the "anti-bush, anti-american and anti-israel" MSM.
I don't mean to summarily dismiss all his work in one stroke, but if the point of this post is that one ought to be skeptical of war reporting, then one ought to be skeptical of any and all war reporting. Yon, Roggio, et al. seem to get a free pass around here, as if all they wrote were pure virgin facts unfiltered through their own particular biases and lenses. I wonder, do you admire these reporters because they inform well your views, or because they confirm them?
A'dam,
Yon is giving the other side of the story that the leftard lying propagandists won't tell.
He can leave the anti-american, anti-semitic, pro-terror stories to the usual MSM scum.
He doesn't need to say that the military sometimes screws up. There are 5000 stories like that every day. He's there to tell the stories not already told. The good ones aren't being told. His is a niche market in truth. When you exclude all positives and only report negatives in a deliberate attempt to sway public opinion, having a counterbalance is a public service. That balance need to be expanded.
Warwick: Fine, except why is it that when the "MSM scum" "exclude all positives and only report negatives in a deliberate attempt to sway public opinion," you consider them "propagandists," but when Mr. Yon tells only "the other side of the story" (following from your definitions, by "excluding all negatives and only reporting positives"), he's "a niche market in truth"?
Sounds like a double-standard to me. If reporting only the "anti-US" side of the story makes the MSM propagandists, then only reporting the "pro-US" side makes Mr. Yon one as well. The fact that he "tells the stories not already told" makes him rare, but no less partial or biased.
As usual, the leftard A apostrophe dam argues minutia while missing the point.