CENTCOM says AP’s "Iraqi police source" isn’t Iraqi police -- Part 11 -- Continued from this post.

AP: Still not off the hook; Plus: The Question
Michelle Malkin

"Who is Jamil Hussein?" is becoming the new "Who is John Galt?"--a blogospheric refrain that both summarizes and challenges MSM apathy about its questionable war reporting.

Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham is the latest to pose the question in the Washington Examiner.

Historian and Army infantry officer Robert Bateman, using the latest AP scandal over its six burning Sunnis report as a hook, has a must-read reminder in the NYPost today about the botched war reporting of the Associated Press:

The most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous - used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong - but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.  ...

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Who Is In Denial?
Lorie Byrd

I find it ironic that so many in the media who claim President Bush is in denial over the status of the war in Iraq do a good bit of denying themselves when anyone calls them on bias or questionable reporting.With so much evidence stacking up, from Rathergate to the fauxtography pictures to the recent Burning Six story, the credibility of media outlets like the AP and Reuters has taken serious hits. If those in the mainstream media don't acknowledge recent problems and take action to address them, their credibility will continue to erode. I have more on this topic in my column at Townhall today.

Update: Robert Bateman believes the AP is in denial too.

But the Iraqi government and the U.S. Army have long warned the AP about its use of "spokesmen" who don't exist. Indeed this time it appears that there is no such officer in the Iraqi police force in Baghdad. More, they could find no evidence of such an attack (though they did see that one mosque had been hit with some gasoline and had some smoke and scorching damage in the entryway).

Did the AP retract or reinvestigate? Nah. Instead, in a follow-up story a few days later, it simply noted the old (2005) news about efforts to plant Coalition press releases in the Iraqi media, accused the Iraqis of censorship and claimed that it had found three more (anonymous, naturally) witnesses. In effect, AP said that, no matter what the Iraqi police headquarters said, Hussein is one of its spokesmen after all. ...

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Getting The News From The Enemy, Update VI
Posted by Curt

A must read in the ongoing saga of AP shenanigans is in the NY Post today written by Robert Bateman who covered the AP's deliberate use of a fraud to report on a supposed Korean war massacre:

THE most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous - used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong - but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they're at it again in Iraq.

I have got direct experience of this - from challenging the AP's seriously flawed 1999 "scoop" about the massacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians', as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred - there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP's sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily's account was chilling. It was also - as AP should have known - a fantasy. ...

Many of us have known that the MSM spins stories in such a way that it supports the leftist agenda. But with the Jamil Hussein story we have the AP making up news to support that same agenda. The reporter made it up out of whole cloth and sold it to his editors who could care less if its real or not. It fits in with their view of Iraq. ...

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The AP Goes Truthy. Will the Left Stay Silent?
Confederate Yankee

Looking back from the future, we may one day determine that a macabre but seemingly straightforward story of Iraqi sectarian violence was the beginning of the end of credibility for the world's largest news organization.

Six burned alive in Iraq
The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left Friday prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital a day after suspected Sunni insurgents killed 215 people in Baghdad's main Shiite district. ...

This story first began emerging late on November 24, with the version of the story printed above being published on November 25.

Thanks to some investigative started by Curt of Flopping Aces into the many apparent discrepancies in the story, we now know for a fact that significant portions of this story are categorically false, and that other details are highly suspect.

We know that four mosques were not burned nor blown up as the AP story alleges. We know that only one mosque was burned, and the extent of that damage was relatively minor. We know that Imad al-Hasimi, the Sunni leader cited in the original story, has recanted his earlier statements. We also know there is no record of burned bodies being taken the Kazamiyah Hospital, or anywhere else, for that matter. They've simply never been produced.

We also know that the star witness for the Associated Press in this story, Iraqi Police Capt. Jamil Hussein, has never existed. ...

As I wrote three days ago:

This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no idea how much of the news it has reported out of Iraq since the 2003 invasion is in fact real, and how much they reported was propaganda. they failure of accountability here is potentially of epic proportions.

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-official 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. ...

You would think that the possibility of such widespread fraud would bring forth all bloggers hoping to call into question what appears to be a terminally flawed methodology of news gathering. Instead, the cry for the Associated Press to produce Jamil Hussein, to examine their stringer-based reporting methods, and launch an impartial investigation into how things could have gone so horribly wrong, has been almost exclusively an endeavor from the center-right blogosphere and conservative-leaning media outlets.

Surely, I thought, not just conservatives desire facts and accuracy in the reporting from the world's largest media organization. These stories, if inaccurate, impact all of us, regardless of political persuasion.

Hoping that the silence in this matter from top liberal bloggers was the silence of simply not knowing— ...

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AP to bloggers: Stop maligning our stringers, chickenhawks
Allahpundit

Another volley from Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor. Last Friday, according to Times writer Tom Zeller, she told reporters it would be the height of foolishness to continue to engage the “mad blog rabble” (Zeller’s words). And yet, here we are.

First things first. Where’s Waldo?

[Jamil] Hussein is well known to AP. We first met him, in uniform, in a police station, some two years ago. We have talked with him a number of times since then and he has been a reliable source of accurate information on a variety of events in Baghdad…

As careful followers of the Iraq story know well, various militias have been accused of operating within the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and has long worked to suppress news of death-squad activity in its ranks. (This is the same ministry that questioned Capt. Hussein’s existence and last week announced plans to take legal action against journalists who report news that creates the impression that security in Iraq is bad, “when the facts are totally different.”)

She’s all but accusing the MOI spokesman who challenged them of being a Sadrist tool, which I guess means we’re unwittingly doing the bidding of the Mahdi Army by extension. The AP’s been accused of doing the bidding of terrorists itself, of course, and in case not so unwittingly. So, touche. But here’s an idea: instead of issuing these snide Friday broadsides, produce Jamil Hussein. Snap a few photos and put them on the wire. Or, if that would endanger him, arrange a meeting between him and someone from MOI. Or, if that would endanger him, between him and the Centcom press director. If Hussein feels safe enough to have himself identified by name, rank, and precinct in AP news reports, he should be willing to chat with an American officer for 20 minutes. It’s exceedingly strange and suspect that the AP has available to it hard evidence that would explode its critics charges, yet so far as we know it’s made no attempt to produce that evidence. Not once have they offered to supply anyone with concrete proof of Hussein’s existence. Why not?

She goes on:

The Iraqi journalists who work for the AP are smart, dedicated and incredibly courageous to go into the streets every day, talking to their countrymen and trying to capture a portrait of their home in a historic and tumultuous period…

Questioning their integrity and work ethic is simply offensive.

It’s awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad.

She’s right. It’s much harder to take pot shots from Baghdad, which is where Times reporter Ed Wong was when he told Zeller there’d been no uproar locally over any kerosene incident — a highly unusual reaction to an event that, er, incendiary. The Times also called some local residents who confirmed there’d been an attack on the mosque but had heard nothing about anyone being burned alive. Does Carroll know that, I wonder? I wouldn’t blame her, if not: the Times has been conspicuously quiet about it. How convenient, though, that instead of having to answer charges from another esteemed media outlet that the incident never took place, she gets to act indignant and slough it off as the product of chickenhawk bloggers’ feverish media-bashing.

As for her assertion that it’s offensive to question the integrity of Iraqi stringers, ...

I wonder how much time Kathleen Carroll's spent in Iraq, or any other war zone. Was Megan McClung a chickenhawk?

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AP's Kathleen Carroll Plays For High Stakes (as did Nixon)
Bruce Kesler

Kathleen Carroll is by no means a rookie to the news business. Here’s her bio, from a International Women’s Media Foundation forum she participated in.

[...]

In a March 2006 report at Poynter Online, Kathleen Carroll said:

It's clear that people want and need information about the world -- from their neighborhoods to communities across the state, country and globe. So if the AP gives them reliable information and the context to understand it... if we deliver it in all kinds of formats -- text, photos, video, sound, maps, interactives -- and make it available through newspapers, computers, mobile phones or other devices... then we'll succeed.

So, when Carroll vehemently affirms the Associated Press story of six Sunnis set afire, one might venture both that she knows whereof she speaks (although having scant apparent foreign or war reporting experience) and that she carries the reputation of the AP on her words.

In Carroll’s latest repetitive defense statement, she says (well pretty much what she said before):

Their [critics] assertions that the AP has been duped or worse are unfounded and just plain wrong.

No organization has done more to try to shed light on what happened Nov. 24 in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad than The Associated Press. ...

Carroll, however, dissembles. Where is the transparency, where are the facts? The AP's search for truth hasn't taken it very far.

The AP won’t produce its star source, Jamil Hussein, the policeman that neither the Iraqi Ministry of Interior nor CENTCOM can find record of, any of the immolated bodies or their names, the names and credentials of the local Iraqis the AP used as reporters of the incident and the AP’s follow-up, the purported conveniently located afterward anonymous witnesses, nor any Sunni leaders who are aware of the claimed incident.

Kathleen Carroll has experience, yes. And, Richard Nixon was an experienced politician. Leading Republicans, finally, told him the gig was up, the cover-up had doomed his credibility and position. Where are the responsible media leaders who will tell Ms. Carroll?

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My Answer To The AP, Again
Posted by Curt  (at Flopping Aces)

As is typical I was at work when something big occured in the blogging world.  It appears the AP has issued another silly rebuttal to this growing scandal of the Burning Six and I just checked it out. 

First thought, isn't this the same rebuttal as the last one except for a added history lesson?

In recent days, a handful of people have stridently criticized The Associated Press’ coverage of a terrible attack on Iraqi citizens last month in Baghdad. Some of those critics question whether the incident happened at all and declare that they don't believe our reporting.

Indeed, a small number of them have whipped themselves into an indignant lather over the AP's reporting.

A few people?  Come on now.  If there was only a few people you wouldn't feel the need to issue not one but two inane rebuttals.

We have sent journalists to the neighborhood three different times to talk with people there about what happened. And those residents have repeatedly told us, in some detail, that Shiite militiamen dragged six Sunni worshippers from a mosque, drenched them with kerosene and burned them alive.

No one else has said they have actually gone to the neighborhood. Particularly not the individuals who have criticized our journalism with such barbed certitude.

Ok, lets hear their names?  How many of them were there who witnessed it?  Where are the families of those killed?

Then she tries to tell us that we have no right to question them because we are not in Iraq?  Give me a break.  If you would just produce this Jamil Hussein with proof that he is indeed a police officer employed by the Iraqi government then this whole friggin thing would go away.  But what do you do Ms. Carroll?  Instead of providing proof you attack those who question you. 

What should that tell us about your story? 

What we found were more witnesses who described the attack in particular detail as well as describing the fear that runs through the neighborhood. We ran a lengthy story on those additional findings, as well as the questions, on Nov. 28.

Um, hello?  You found three unnamed witnesses.  That's it.  Out of a whole neighborhood you found three witnesses who would not give their names.  Puhlease. ...

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The AP trips over its own wire
Ray Robison

Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press has addressed the rising cacophony of bloggers and pundits insisting that the AP substantiate its recent reporting of six Sunnis being burned alive in Baghdad. They AP editor states:

Indeed, a small number of them have whipped themselves into an indignant lather over the AP's reporting.

Well, I am not sure how the AP defines “a small number” (a surprisingly vague term for a statement expounding upon the accuracy of the AP), but let’s quantify this in a familiar term, the Google search. As of this writing, when I type in “who is Jamil Hussein”, a very specific search term in quotations that will only bring that exact question in the results I find 11,700 returns. A search for “Jamil Hussein” as of now will provide you with 162,000 returns. Sounds like quite a few more people than a “small number” are concerned about the AP’s reporting.

But for those looking for an answer to the questions about Jamil Hussein, don’t bother with the AP’s response. The AP only reiterates the same points it made days ago. In fact, the entire editorial provides little new information germane to the story. ...

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Part 11 of a series. Part 12