from www.pnm.my
Yesterday's New York Times commented on the horrific report of six Shiites being burned alive in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, which was first reported by the AP on Nov. 24, 2006. The report was contested by the Iraqi interior ministry, the military and a number of right-wing bloggers, or as Tom Zeller Jr. describes them, "bloggers who believe that the media has been drawing false pictures of mayhem in Iraq." AP international editor John Daniszewski stuck by the story, saying that questioning the sourcing (multiple witnesses who confirmed the report and gave specific details) was "frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question."
As Zeller Jr. reports, there does seem to be uncertainty around the reports, though it was picked up by a number of outlets (I saw it repeatedly on Fox News on Nov. 24th, reported live from Baghdad by Fox correspondent Clarissa Ward)(Zeller does not address how those outlets received or verified their reports; I do not recall Fox crediting the AP). Conservative bloggers like Stephen Spruiell at the NRO Media Blog and Michelle Malkin at Hot Air rightly point out that Zeller Jr. did not reference the NYT's own Baghdad correspondent Edward Wong's comments about the difficulty in verifying the report, as published on Zeller Jr.'s NYT blog The Lede, where he published an email from Wong noting that sources had verified the day's mosque attacks but hadn't heard of Hurriya:
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.
Zeller Jr. wades into opinion in this piece (presumably this was indicated in print with a jagged margin), noting the credibility issues here: "It is also true that the institution conducting America's multibillion gamble in Iraq -- the military -- says that this standout of atrocities never happened, while a venerable, trusted news agency has twice interviewed witnesses who said, in extensive, vivid detail, that it did." It is understandable how the inclusion of this sentence without reference to the NYT's own inability to verify the story would be denounced by right-wing bloggers. But regardless of that point, he notes that this incident, so viscerally violent and horrifying, is the only thing disputed on a day of otherwise horrible violence, and that the questioned accuracy of that particular report has somehow been used to throw the accuracy of other reporting into doubt. CJR's Gal Beckerman responds best to this point:
But the point is that the bloggers and the U.S. Army, who reflexively denied the initial account, did so not because they were concerned with accuracy. They picked on it because they saw a chance to use a potentially false story -- though it seems clear now that it might be true after all -- as a way of throwing into question all the reporting from Iraq and, more specifically, undermining the characterization of the situation in the country as abysmal.
Zeller Jr. also notes the dark threat of "legal action" threatened against journalists who publish information disputed by the Iraq interior ministry, according to a spokesman, which hardly bodes well for a free Iraqi press (Zeller Jr. also reminds readers of the U.S. $12-million contract with the Lincoln Group to monitor coverage in Iraq and issue sunny press releases with a positive spin, following up on their previous work for the Bush administration planting pro-U.S. stories in the Arab press). Meanwhile, another hot issues for Conservative bloggers like Spruiell and Malkin is the use of AP sources that are apparently on a CENTCOM list of "unverified sources" (in this case, police captain Jamil Hussein, or, as the Spruiell puts it, "police captain").
What all this highlights more than anything is the difficulty of obtaining, verifying, and presenting information coming out of Iraq — and why that makes it so much easier to undermine what does come out of there. Wong's full email is reprinted after the jump; I should note that I link to Malkin's blog for the wealth of links it provides, and the fact that I first learned of the Wong email from that source.
Separating Hyperbole From Horror in Iraq [NYT]
The Curse of the 'Small Innaccuracy' [CJR]
Peering Through A Foggy War In Iraq [The Lede, NYT]
Jamilgate: NYT Circles The Wagons For AP [Hot Air]
NYT's Own Reporting Left Out of NYT's CENTCOM vs. AP Analysis [NRO Media Blog]
From Tom Zeller Jr's The Lede:
Ed was unable to substantiate the burning incident for his Saturday story. Here's how he described his reporting on that day, in an e-mail to us this afternoon:
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
