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<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq -- 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, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.</p> <p>The savage revenge attack for Thursday's slaying of 215 people in the Shiite Sadr City slum occurred as members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques...</p>

The Associated Press is among the large news organizations whose reporting in Iraq has been challenged by bloggers. Beyond the specifics of any one incident, a certain pattern and practice of news gathering has made for systematic bias. The end result is propaganda. Michelle Malkin has a new report on the "Jamil Hussein" fiasco at the Associated Press. "Jamil Hussein" is the alleged Iraqi Police captain who has been cited 61 times by AP, recently as a source for an atrocity story that now looks mighty dubious. What has been lost in the debate about "Who is Jamil Hussein?" is...

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. - cut - 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...

new information about the Reuters Photoshop scandal: Reuters fired a top photo editor for the Middle East during an internal investigation of two doctored photos from the Israel-Lebanon war that were published last summer. The editor was the second casualty of the photo manipulation controversy surrounding Reuters freelancer Adnan Hajj. Two of Hajj’s photographs showed obvious signs of digital alterations. Facing a storm of criticism last August, Reuters terminated its relationship with Hajj and pulled more than 900 of his photos from its archive. A Reuters spokesperson said Thursday that the company would not release the name of the editor...

I've been in touch with Bill Costlow (the CPATT (Civilian Police Assistance Training Team) representative) since he has been back in-country and I have a few interesting developments on this story. First, the AP story: Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press. But guess what Bill just confirmed?  Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf never acknowledged that there was a Capt. Jamil Hussein assigned to the Khadra station,...

Just received this from Linda Wagner of the Associated Press: BC-Iraq-Jamil Hussein,1116< Iraq threatens arrest of police captain who spoke to media< By STEVEN R. HURST= Associated Press Writer= BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media. Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein...

My blogging has been lighter than usual the past few weeks due to family time, Fox News duties, holiday chaos, holiday illness--and, yes, planning for a trip to Iraq. As you know, ex-CNN newsman Eason Jordan extended an invitation to me three weeks ago to go to Iraq to investigate the Associated Press/"Jamil Hussein" story. He offered to pay for a trip. As you'll recall, I asked if he would offer to cover travel and security costs for Curt from Flopping Aces--who broke open the story of AP's dubious sources on Thanksgiving weekend and continues to lead the blogospheric search...

Former CNN head Eason Jordan calls out the Associated Press: The AP’s Jamil Hussein Scandal. 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: On November 24, the AP quoted...

Hi, I'm a blogger.

The most explosive and far-reaching news story of the year has nothing to do with underage pages and a certain Republican ex-Congressman. This story involves ignition in the streets of Baghdad and six immolations that probably never occurred. While Mark Foley took down a congressional majority, the tale of Jamil Hussein may end up permanently damaging the credibility of the world's premier news gathering source, the Associate Press... The story begins on Nov. 24 when Qais al-Bashir, an Iraqi "stringer" working for the AP, wrote a story in which he alleged that Shiite militiamen avenging earlier attacks burned down four...

Another search through different avenues has failed to turn up AP’s source for more than 60 reports of atrocities and murders: The AP (non-)responds and another search comes up empty.

WE'RE STARTING TO SEE SOME MEDIA PUSHBACK on the Jamil Hussein story and on criticisms of media reporting from Iraq in general -- Howard Kurtz has a roundup. But I think the media's self-justification misses the point. Just because things are bad in Iraq doesn't justify false reports using phony sources, something that the AP's defenders seem to be suggesting. "Fake but accurate" isn't a standard to be raising, is it? The fact is that we've seen a massive institutional failure on the part of the media.... I think that's bad, but given that there are good reasons (like, you...

By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 20, 2006 03:17 PM After receiving initial reports from a Civilian Police Advisory Training Team (CPATT) source two days ago and investigating further, here's what I can tell you: According to two CPATT officials--one in the U.S, one in Iraq--there is no one named "Jamil Hussein" working now or ever at either at the Yarmouk or al Khadra police stations. That is what they have said all along and nothing has changed. The Baghdad-based CPATT officer says there is no "Sgt. Jamil Hussein" at Yarmouk, which contradicts what Marc Danziger's contacts found. I have another...

As is typical I was at work when something big occurred 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.  (above graphic made by Are We Lumberjacks) 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...

AP: Still not off the hookPlus: The Question By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 08, 2006 10:02 AM "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...

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. - snip - 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...

This morning, the New York Times' Tom Zeller--one of the few on the case--follows up his blog coverage with an article that calls for separating "hyperbole from horror." Unfortunately, Zeller's article doesn't succeed at doing so--and has left the impression that he is, as Lucianne.com writes, "sneering at the blogosphere." Left out of the article, as Allah notes, is Zeller's discovery that the NYTimes reporter in Iraq could not substantiate the story. Zeller published the little-noticed e-mail he received from Times reporter Ed Wong on his blog last week:

The Associated Press used to be a highly respected wire service, and most American newspapers still subscribe to its services. Its extreme left-wing agenda, however, has so polluted its objectiveness that its news reports have become laughable; that is, they would be laughable if the daily damage the AP does to the truth was not so extreme. Many Americans were not even aware of the extent of the problem until this past summer when the AP began a flood of bogus reports portraying the Israelis as monsters and the Hezbollah as misunderstood heroes.

When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it. That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete. The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP. Curt at Floppingaces, www.floppingaces2.blogspot.com,...

Iraq's interior ministry has formed a press monitoring unit in response to what it described as "fabricated and false news" that misrepresents the country's security situation. Singling out the Associated Press for criticism, spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said yesterday that dedicated unit would monitor news coverage and even initiate legal action if journalists do not correct stories it believes to be incorrect. "Fabricated and false news hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different," he said. He added that the media should consult the ministry's large...