CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 10 -- Continued from this post.

***

Right and Wong
Greyhawk

Via Michelle Malkin, a pointer to a NY Times blog discussion on the AP's "6 Sunnis burned alive" story.

In a meeting with us this afternoon, the A.P.’s executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, said again, passionately, “We have done everything we know how to do” to respond to the questions.

Insisting that their witness exists by "vigorously re-reporting" the same thing is apparently the limit - proving his existence is out of the question.

In a longer explanation of the AP position:

The executive editor of The Associated Press, Kathleen Carroll, in a meeting in her office Friday afternoon, explained that the agency had already done all it could to respond to the uncertainties by vigorously re-reporting the article, and suggested that to engage these questions — to continue to write about them — merely fueled a mad blog rabble that would never be satisfied.

Until offered actual proof, that is. But it is interesting to see that the NY Times is asking questions.

They also checked with their own reporter, Ed Wong, who replied as follows.

Hi Tom,
You ask me about what our own reporting shows about this incident. When we first heard of the event on Nov. 24, through the A.P. story and a man named Imad al-Hashemi talking about it on television, we had our Iraqi reporters make calls to people in the Hurriya neighborhood. Because of the curfew that day, everything had to be done by phone. We reached several people who told us about the mosque attacks, but said they had heard nothing of Sunni worshippers being burned alive. Any big news event travels quickly by word of mouth through Baghdad, aided by the enormous proliferation of cell phones here. 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.
Best,
Edward Wong

Now, if I read that correctly he's saying "It seemed very likely to be a bogus story, so we only mentioned it in passing." Remember that rule from the style book the next time you see something mentioned "in passing" in the New York Times. ...

***

Michelle has an excellent roundup here.

***

How to end AP's "60 Minutes Moment" on Iraqi Sources
Mark Tapscott

You've probably not read much about it because only a handful of mainstream media outlets have covered it, but the Associated Press - for decades America's largest and most trusted wire news service - is at the center of a credibility crisis largely of its own making.

You probably have heard of the AP story that started it - a horrifying dispatch from Iraq the day after Thanksgiving claiming that six Sunnis had been doused with kerosene as they left their mosque following Friday prayers and burned alive by Shiite-aligned militiamen.

The story, which was quickly picked up by virtually every major news organization in the world, also claimed that "the Shiite-dominated police and Iraqi military" stood by doing nothing as the six people were gruesomely murdered. The story was sourced to "police Captain Jamil Hussein."

The problem is there appears to be no such person as Captain Jamil Hussein, at least not who is employed by the Iraqi police. The U.S. military says Hussein doesn't exist and has demanded that AP issue a correction. The Iraqi government says no such person is on its police payroll.

Things have gotten progressively worse for AP since those initial questions about "Hussein" were raised by U.S. and Iraqi officials. A firestorm of criticism has exploded in the Blogosphere as bloggers have researched the names of more than a dozen Iraqi- named sources of apparently doubtful credibility that have appeared in AP stories.

The suggestion among many of the bloggers is that AP is being had by Iraqis aligned with the insurgency who are posing as credible sources and are using the world's most respected wire news service to project to the world a flawed image of the conflict in Iraq. ...

... Remember two years ago when bloggers raised questions about a "60 Minutes" segment led by CBS News Anchor Dan Rather? The segment was based on documents provided under strange circumstances by a mysterious source who has never been identified. Rather said the documents suggested President Bush received favored treatment by the National Guard in order to avoid service in Vietnam.

Within hours of the “60 Minutes” broadcast, however, bloggers were uncovering persuasive evidence that the documents were almost certainly forgeries. CBS convened an investigation by former AP President Lou Boccardi and former U.S. ATtorney-General Dick Thornburgh. Boccardi and Thornburgh were unable to verify the documents. Rather retired.

It's time for AP to take the same sort of approach to resolve the Captain Jamil Hussein controversy. But there is one big difference between the present issue and the Dan Rather/"60 Minutes" ordeal - AP provides news to virtually every daily newspaper in America. AP is a cornerstone of the mainstream media. If AP's credibiilty is harmed, every news organization that uses its products also suffers.

Thus, AP should ask the American Society of Newspaper Editors to oversee the appointment and conduct of an independent panel of respected journalists and outside evidentiary experts to determine the truth behind Captain Jamil Hussein and all other sources similarly in doubt.

To allow this controversy to continue to fester without taking decisive actions to resolve it to everybody's satisfaction could be disastrous for journalists everywhere

***

Patterico notes:

The Jamil Hussein controversy is in U.S. News & World Report (at least online!), in a brief paragraph that quotes Jules Crittenden’s column on the subject.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 12:19

Seven Days
by Armed Liberal

It's been seven days since my post 'AP "Calls" Flopping Aces' on the controversy about the truthfulness of the AP report that six Iraqis has been burned alive when their mosque was attacked.

The AP story was sourced by Iraqi stringers who cite an Iraqi police captain that no one can find, and AP hasn't produced. Their response has been 'trust us, we're trained professionals...and pull up your pants! (cf Dennis Leary)'.

Personally, I doubt the story - not because it's not possible, but because no other media organization has been able to produce more than vague rumors about it, and it was such a heinous crime that it would have pushed all other talk among Iraqis aside. And it didn't. Hot Air cites a NT Times reporter in Iraq:

[...]

But more than that, it's kind of a defining moment in terms of press accountability. Are they accountable when challenged? So fat, the AP is saying "no".

Mark Tapscott, over at the Examiner (disclosure: he's the guy who buys my columns there) has a piece up today on "How to end AP's "60 Minutes Moment" on Iraqi Sources". It's worth a read.

[...]

Transparency, accountability, a willingness to admit error. The media expects that from those it deals with. Can it play by the same rules? ...

*** Update and bump. Previous timestamp 15:36

Free Jamil Hussein
Flopping Aces

First things first for today's update on the AP's fraudulent story "The Burning Six".

Thanks to Jessica Well for making these two icons for all to share on their blogs.  Take them and put them up:

Meanwhile Mark Tapscott writes in the Washington Examiner about this whole situation:

[see above]

And as I wrote about earlier, this Jamil Hussein was mentioned as a source in 61...get that?  SIXTY ONE articles by the AP.  His partner in crime Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq was mentioned as a source in 23 articles until the Iraqi government issued a warrant out for his arrest for impersonating a government official. 

This is our MSM at work folks.  They use frauds as sources for articles and then have the gall to wonder what all the ruckus is about. 

I mean think about it.  If they have used Jamil for 61 stories, how many more fraudulent sources are used every single day by our MSM?   

Confederate Yankee:

When producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather ran faked Texas Air National Guard records on 60 Minutes, it was undoubtedly the largest news media scandal of 2004, and yet, it was an isolated scandal, identified within hours, affecting one network and one show in particular.

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone.  ...

Meanwhile all we get from the AP is "we are happy with the reporting on this story."  That's it.  Don't bother to produce this Jamil Hussein with proof of employment.  Don't bother finding the families of those supposedly burnt.  We get nothing but smug silence, as if WE are the ones that need to prove our case.

Actually its exactly the opposite.  We have produced enough evidence that this story is a fraud and it is now up to them to provide some HARD evidence that we are wrong.  No unnamed witnesses.  No fake policemen.  So basically they need to do what any honest hardworking reporter would have done before going to print with this story, fact check the damn thing.

But I'm sure it fit into their preconceived notions of a "civil war" in Iraq so they said what the hell.....it just has to be true.  Tapscott again: ... 

***

60 Billion Minutes
Confederate Yankee

Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner weighs in on how the Associated Press can extricate themselves from the Jamil Hussein/burning men story in Iraq. Sound familiar?

[see above]

Produce Jamil Hussein. Brilliant!

By this point, the Associated Press has almost assuredly tried to contact Jamil Hussein to come on camera, in uniform, in his police office to prove that he does in fact exist, thereby shutting down this gathering storm.

Just as assuredly, the present silence from the Associated Press on the matter indicates that they have likely failed to produce their source for over 60 news stories.

To give you an idea of the scale of this apparent fraud, consider the case of veteran freelance photojournalist Adnan Hajj from earlier this year.

Hajj was exposed for tampering with a photo from the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, where he added dense smoke to a picture to make an Israeli bombing seem more intense than it actually was. Shortly thereafter, another manipulated photo was uncovered, and other photos came under intense scrutiny. Reuters, who had worked with Hajj for over a decade, responded by disassociating itself from him (effectively firing him) and removing all 920 photos he had for sale.

Hajj was just one reporter, caught manipulating images that most would agree over-dramatized and mis-characterized events, but images that would not have been significant news on their own if they had been real.

The story that brought into question the existence of Jamil Hussein is a much larger scandal in the making. ...

... When producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather ran faked Texas Air National Guard records on 60 Minutes, it was undoubtedly the largest news media scandal of 2004, and yet, it was an isolated scandal, identified within hours, affecting one network and one show in particular.

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Instead of affecting one show on one network watched by 14 million viewers as Rathergate did, "Jamilgate" means the Associated Press may have been delivering news of questionable accuracy to one billion people a day for two years or more. In this evolving instance of faux journalism, "60 Minutes" is now potentially 60 billion false impressions, or more. ...

***

Part 10 of a series. Part 11