Hang Right Politics

Posted by Kathy on January 22nd, 2007 in Media Bias, The Fourth Estate, The Pinocchio Press, Uncategorized

Remember the four burned mosques story by the AP, and their mysterious ’source’ Jamil Hussein? The AP finally found him, and declared the story over.

Not so fast, AP.

What about the original report?

To see pictures of the mosques and the rest of the story, Michelle Malkin has more:

January 21, 2007 — WELL, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior says disputed Associated Press source Jamil Hussein does exist. But at least one story he told the AP just doesn’t check out: The Sunni mosques that as Hussein claimed and AP reported as “destroyed,” “torched” and “burned and [blown] up” are all still standing. So the credibility of every AP story relying on Jamil Hussein remains dubious.

Let’s take it from the beginning.

When the AP ran its head- line-grabbing and horrifying account of alleged atrocities in Baghdad last Thanksgiving, its main source was an Iraqi police captain, one Jamil Hussein.

Bloggers led by Curt of Flopping Aces (floppingaces.net) raised questions about the veracity and existence of Hussein and the information he supplied to the AP. U.S. military officials and the Iraqi government initially disputed that Hussein was employed as a legitimate police officer.

After several weeks of stonewalling by its news executives, the AP published a report quoting an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman who reversed course and verified Hussein’s existence and employment. Left-wing blogs and mainstream-media outlets crowed - eagerly proclaiming the death of the conservative blogosphere’s credibility and declaring the matter settled.

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll indignantly attacked those who had questioned the global news organization’s reporting: “I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story,” she told Editor and Publisher. “AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq.”

Well, Bryan Preston and I visited the area during our Iraq trip last week. Several mosques did, in fact, come under attack by Mahdi Army forces. But the “destroyed” mosques all still stand. Iraqi and U.S. Army officials say that two of them received no fire damage whatsoever. Another, which we filmed, was abandoned and empty when it was attacked.

WE obtained summary reports and photos filed at the time by Iraqi and U.S. Army troops on the scene. They contain no corroborating evidence of Hussein’s claim that “Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene.”

Go here and read the rest of her account in the NY Post. And don’t miss this part:

And if this one doesn’t, how many others don’t? As AP exec Carroll herself said, “AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq.” Jamil Hussein supplied the AP with information for scores of stories, not just this faulty one. Rumor-based reporting serves no one’s interests but those who would see Iraq fail.

On one of Lucianne’s threads, I saw this little expression, and I think it’s apt. The AP is the enemedia.

Some of us believed that shocking AP report; and it is from that particular one that many people threw in the towel on Iraq calling it civil war. The damage cannot be undone.

I admire what Michelle Malkin has done in tracking this story down. I won’t wait for the retraction by the AP - the Jayson Blair of international media - but it does emphasize just how low the press has gone in its fabrication of a “we’re losing” meme.

We cannot trust them even slightly. Don’t take what they say with a GRAIN of salt, take it with a salt mine.