CENTCOM says AP's "Iraqi police source" isn't Iraqi police -- Part 27 -- Continued from this post.

When I heard Eason Jordan had crawled out from under his rock I figured the best thing to do was just ignore him, and I dang sure never expected to link to anything he wrote. Life's just full of surprises. I guess if FDR could make nice with Stalin to fight an even greater evil ...

Jamilgate: Eason Jordan goes nuclear on the AP
Allahpundit

No righty blogger will ever trust him, but give him credit for pushing this knowing that it won't endear him to his remaining fans. I look forward to Eric Boehlert's next dopey exercise in What Warbloggers Believe, in which Eric explains how a guy who once accused U.S. troops of trying to murder journalists is actually a neocon Bush-booster busying himself with minutiae to avoid facing the hard facts on the ground.

Expect some sniping at him from the left tomorrow, too, with nastiness inversely proportional to familiarity with the details of the case. Everything in Iraq is as bad as it could be, especially the things that never happened, and anyone who says otherwise is a tendentious liar who'd happily betray the Larger Truth for the, um, actual truth.

As for the post itself, ...

The AP's Jamil Hussein Scandal
Eason Jordan

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

This controversy and the AP's handling of it call into question the credibility, integrity, and smarts of one of the world's biggest, most influential, most respected news organizations, the New York-based Associated Press.

The back story:

[see my previous 26 Jamilgate posts]

In the absence of irrefutable evidence that Captain Hussein exists and that the original AP report was accurate, bloggers and a few mainstream media journalists kept plugging away in an effort to get to the truth about whether there is a Captain Hussein and whether six Sunnis were burned alive that day.

Five weeks after the disputed episode, key questions remain unanswered, but what is clear is the AP has botched its handling of this controversy - and it's not going away until the AP deals with it forthrightly and transparently. ..

Therefore, in the absence of clear and compelling evidence to corroborate the AP's exclusive story and Captain Hussein's existence, we must conclude for now that the AP's reporting in this case was flawed.

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

When two governments challenge the veracity of your reporting, when there are reasonable doubts about whether your prime named source for a sensational exclusive story exists, when there's no proof a reported horrific incident occurred, when the news outlet responsible for the disputed report stonewalls and is stridently defensive, when the validity of dozens of other of your reports has been called into question as a result, then that news organization has a scandal on its hands, and that is where the AP finds itself. ...

I, therefore, urge the AP to appoint an independent panel to determine the facts about the disputed report, to determine whether Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein exists, and to share the panel's full findings and recommendations with the public.

Until this matter is resolved, the AP's credibility will suffer. ...

As much as I hate to say it, read the whole thing. I've even bookmarked the site, would you believe. Hell will freeze over, however, before you see Eason Jordan listed as a "Friend" on my sidebar.

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Jamilgate: Eason Jordan (!) Demands Panel Investigate AP
Good Lt

... We'll see how long it lasts, but the stonewalling of the AP regarding the Jamil Hussein scandal has gotten so bad that Eason Jordan (yes, that Eason Jordan) is even demanding that the AP appoint an independent panel to investigate and uncover the truth here.

And yes, I and others have been very critical of the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief, with good reason. That should indicate how badly the AP botched this incident. One can't exactly say whether Jordan is doing this out of true journalistic interest or for some other unknown reason, but it frankly doesn't matter. What's right is right.  ...

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Meanwhile, from the news organization EJ helped create:

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"Confederate Yankee" Bob Owens just posted two absolutely excellent related pieces. Read Gone in 60 Stories: The Grunt Work and Gone in 60 Stories, now, in that order.

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Questions Will Remain Until the AP Adequately Addresses This 
Lorie Byrd

I have been critical of Eason Jordan in the past and will continue to be, but I have to agree with his assessment of the AP's reaction to the Jamil Hussein story.

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly. ...

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

Jordan says the U.S. military was quick to question the "Burning Six" story, but did not remind readers that what prompted them to do so was the work of Curt at Flopping Aces who contacted Centcom with questions about Hussein. This is one of those stories bloggers were instrumental in uncovering and bloggers remain the only ones really pushing hard to get at the truth of this and other suspicious sources used in Iraq and other news coverage. If Jamil Hussein is a valid source, preferably a living, breathing one, the AP should be bending over backward to provide evidence to put this to controversy to rest. The fact that they haven't does incredible damage to their credibility. (Thanks to Kim for pointing me to the Jordan post.)

Update: ...

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Curt reacts here.

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Bruce Kesler has an excellent related post here.

*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 06:48

"It's Just A Scratch"
Armed Liberal

In a display of clueless arrogance unmatched since the Black Knight refused to yield to King Arthur, the AP replies to its critics on l'affaire Jamail Hussein:

NEW YORK A long-running dispute between The Associated Press and critics over one of its Iraqi sources show no signs of abating, despite at least two lengthy rebuttals by the news organization. The new IraqSlogger web site, founded by former CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, is out with a fresh challenge, after failing to resolve the issue in its own detective work. This has not set off a new round of examination by the AP, apparently.

Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, told E&P today that she had not read Jordan's latest item, posted Monday, and likely would not. But she stood by the news organization's previous statements backing the existence of an Iraqi police captain, Jamail Hussein.

"I've been pretty public about what we have done to get to the crux of the criticism we have gotten about it," she added. When asked about critics' demands that AP produce Hussein to prove his existence, she said "that area [where he works] has pretty much been ethnically cleansed, it is a nasty place and continues to be."

Carroll said that Hussein "is a guy we've talked to for years," adding that "we don't have anything new to say about it, nothing new to add."  ...

Here's the problem, Ms. Carroll. We don't believe he exists. If he doesn't exist, much of your reporting from Iraq is subject to dispute. If your reporting from Iraq is subject to dispute, your credibility is pretty much blown apart - and I don't know what else you have to sell. ... 

Do read the whole thing. Un-freakin'-believable.

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What Else Is Made Up Regarding Iraq?
A. J. Strata

Reader Crosspatch noted a series of like sounding, yet unsourced and unspecified death figures for Iraq in the comments of this post. One would have to wonder, in light of all the shenanigans discovered with AP and other media credibility on Iraq stories, whether these have any basis in reality. So I also did some searching on vague stories with anonymous sources of deaths in Iraq and found these:

(1) Oct 16, 2006 - 81 bodies found in Baghdad, from an unspecified “official with Baghdad emergency police” (CNN).

(2) Sept 13, 2006 - 65 bodies found across Iraq, from unspecified Iraq police sources (AP of course)

3) Sept 15, 2006 - 30 bodies found in Baghdad, from no source whatsoever (AP again).

What is amazing is the consistency of unspecified sources. Why would anyone be concerned about naming the death toll in Iraq? What possible reason would someone have to remaining anonymous? They are death tolls. What our reader Crosspatch noted was a series of Reuters articles that involved a common recurring source designated “an Interior Ministry source”. While some of the reporting seems reasonable to come from an Interior Ministry source, the fact is no one can trust the media anymore. After the incident with the staged photographs in Lebanon (see my posts on Hezbollah for evidence and links to others) and now the mythical AP source Jamil Hussein,why should we trust the media? After CBS News and Dan RaTher tried to pawn off forged documents as real evidence against our President why should we treat the media as credible? After the media was duped by forgeries in the Downing Street memos - why should the media be trusted to know what the truth is? ...

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AP continues to shred its credibility by stonewalling on Jamil Hussein
By Charles Bird

Jamil Hussein has appeared as an AP source in 60± news stories. The most spectacular item was the one about four mosques being destroyed and six Sunnis being burned alive. As it turns out, at worst, one mosque was destroyed and there is no evidence that anyone was murdered via torching.

When challenged on the veracity of the story, AP editors went on the offensive and attacked those who questioned its sources, playing the typical motive-impugning game that we see all too often from the hardline Liberal-Left. Apparently, to AP, the motives of government sources are always in question yet the motives of its own sources are pure as the driven snow. AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll still stands by Jamil Hussein, even though the man cannot be located anywhere, and even though both Iraqi and American government officials deny that Jamil Hussein is a police captain or spokesman for the Iraqi police.

The latest journalist calling out AP is none other than Eason Jordan, the former CNN news executive who faced his own blogstorm and ended up resigning because of his unsupportable off-the-record remarks that American troops were deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. ...

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Don Surber: AP's credibility self-immolates

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Patterico:

Ms. Carroll, I’ve got “news” for you: this is not going away. The bunker mentality is not going to work.

P.S. While I want to know more about Jam(a)il Hussein, I continue to believe that it is a mistake to focus on his “existence” to the exclusion of focusing on the other problems with the AP story. I am primarily concerned with the fact that the initial AP story on the “burning six” reported that four mosques were burned. The AP later dialed that back to one mosque, but never admitted error. I’d like to see pictures of those mosques — a possibility that Armed Liberal has dangled in front of us for days. Pictures like that would be a hard fact that we could compare to Jam(a)il Hussein’s story — and if they contradict him, then Owens’s lack of corroboration for 40 other stories takes on new significance.

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Part 27 of a series. Part 28