(Part 7 -- Continued from this post.)

Brave New World 
Jules Critendon

The pajama-clad ranks of conservative bloggers are officially here as effective media watchdogs, having forced Dan Rather's retirement; having forced Reuters and other news agencies to come to terms with the propaganda they were shilling for terrorists in Lebanon; and having now prompted action from both the United States military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry after evidence of fraudulent war crimes reports by the Associated Press.

It is a beautiful phenomenon to observe.

The Associated Press, in its monopoly status, feels justifiably insulated from these annoying attacks. The AP is a monopoly, and high-level news executives, many of whom share the AP's anti-war and anti-administration sentiments, are likely to look at the latest scandal as just another one of the periodic speed bumps all news organizations encounter. So the question becomes, is the right half of the blogosphere capable of producing a sufficient stink to lead to more substantive results? Changes at the Associated Press, or perhaps even the emergence of a competitive U.S. wire service that will approach the news in a manner that is more ... fair and balanced.

Here is my Boston Herald column on the subject.

One cautionary note.  ...

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Say no to AP’s shoddy work
Jules Crittenden

When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.

That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.

The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.

Curt at Floppingaces, www.floppingaces2.blogspot.com, led the charge. He thought there was something strange about an AP report, and took a second look at it, then a third look. He and others blew the lid off it. The AP is making up war crimes. But the resulting stink in the blogosphere has barely wrinkled a nose in the mainstream press. The ethics-obsessed Poynter Institute seems to be oblivious to it.

It has to do with the AP’s Iraqi stringers and an oft-quoted Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. Problem is, the Iraqi police say Capt. Hussein does not exist. The Iraqi police and U.S. military say an incident described in an AP report - Iraqi soldiers standing by as people were burned alive in a mosque - didn’t happen. Another AP-reported incident, U.S. soldiers shooting 11 civilians, also never happened, the military says.

When the AP was forced to acknowledge this situation, it did so in a story about a new Interior Ministry policy regarding false reports. The AP buried the fact that its own false report prompted this new policy.  ...

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Charles Johnson notes:

Please note that the Associated Press has yet to produce proof that “Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussain” actually exists; all we got from them was an arrogant statement that they are “satisfied with their reporting.”

Shouldn’t it be simple for them to produce “Captain Hussain,” and repair the damage to their reputation? They certainly had no problem getting in touch with him when he had stories of atrocities and US war crimes.

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Don Surber:

... The partisanship shown at the AP has been obvious for years. Guess-the-crooks's-party has been a game I play. If a Republican politician is arrested/charged/investigated/convicted, his party affiliation is in the lead paragraph. For Democrats, well the first AP story about the FBI going after William "the Fridge" Jefferson waited until paragraph five to bother saying he is a Democrat. (See, "AP Bias Shows Again.")

This has now spilled over to foreign reporting, where the anti-Republican bias has become an anti-American bias. I realize AP is not supposed to just rewrite allied press releases, but does no one in the great AP bureaucracy in New York care that the American military has just called the organization a liar?

Someone independent of the foreign bureau should check it out.

Might be a situation where the American government is covering up, ala Watergate.

Might be a situation where someone is lying, ala Janet Cooke.

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The AP undressed
Scott Johnson

... The oblivion has reached epidemic proportions. Some kind of congratulations are in order to Crittenden, who in this column plays the role of the little boy in the story of the naked emperor

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The Demise Of The MSM?
Flopping Aces

In the 1970's the big 3 automakers felt invincible. They had a huge monopoly on the cars we as Americans drove for many decades and felt that if they made it, customers would come. What did we get for it? Undriveable pieces of metal.

People began to buy the imports because, well, they were better cars.

Now when it comes to our media we have the AP and Reuters. That's it. Yeah, there is a few assorted little wire services, but no one uses them.

So what do we get for this monopoly? Bad reporting. Jules Crittenden takes a look at this phenomenon in the Boston Herald and doesn't like what he sees:

[...]

At one time newsrooms across the country were filled with vets from WWII and Korea, filled with those who had lived through the depression, basically filled with level headed people who could understand a threat to this country when they see it.

Now what do we get? We get reporters coming from liberal colleges with preconceived biases against the right. They are NOT unbiased, they are not people with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Instead they are moonbats who have no problem doing shoddy work as long as it hurts those they hate.....conservatives.

Jules takes the media to task while Trudy Rubin writes glowingly about them in the Philadelphia Inquirer: ...

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Rick at Brutally Honest writes:

Let there be no doubt that biased reporting by the likes of the Associated (with terrorists) Press, Reuters, CNN and others has led to civilian deaths and American casualties.  You can play a part in confronting this kind of BS by writing letters to the editor, contacting local papers and letting them know you're sick of the biased reporting, the false leads, the leaks and the nefariousness of the press.

You can make the kind of noise that results in change. Play your part in the wider war on terror and join the forces of decency on the Information Front.  Make your voice heard and, as Crittenden's column indicates, just say no to shoddy journalism.

Lives are at stake.

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Part 7 of a series. Part 8