Posted on 11/27/2006 3:41:07 PM PST by lowbridge
????
That is a decision for the Iraqi gov't to make. We can indicate of course that we'd have no objection...
ok .. ignore my last post .. I TOTALLY misread it
lol....no problem.
Nov. 30, 2006, 5:34PM
Iraq ministry forms unit to monitor news
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find "fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different."
He said offenders would be notified and asked to "correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them."
Khalaf explained the news monitoring unit at a weekly Ministry of Interior briefing. As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.
The AP reported that six Sunni Muslims there were burned alive during the attack. The story quoted witnesses and police Capt. Jamil Hussein.
Khalaf said the ministry had no one on its staff by the name of Jamil Hussein.
"Maybe he wore an MOI (Ministry of Interior) uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money," Khalaf said.
Khalaf said the ministry had dispatched a team to the Hurriyah neighborhood and to the morgue but found no witnesses or evidence of burned bodies.
The spokesman said the ministry had a large public relations staff and said they should be contacted by the media to "get real, true news."
U.S. military had no comment on the immolations on the day of the attack but subsequently issued a statement, citing the Iraqi army as saying it had found nothing to substantiate the report.
U.S. Navy Lt. Michael B. Dean, a public affairs officer for the multi-national force, later demanded that the story be retracted because he said police Capt. Jamil Hussein "is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee."
His allegations were checked with the AP reporter, who had been in routine contact for more than two years with Hussein, in some cases sitting in his office in the Yarmouk police station in west Baghdad. Hussein wore a police uniform during the face-to-face meetings.
Hussein confirmed the burning story on three separate occasions. AP reporters also went to the neighborhood and found three witnesses to the immolations who told nearly identical stories. Since then more people in the neighborhood have told about the incident in a similar fashion. Pictures of the Mustafa mosque where the incident occurred show that it is badly damaged by explosives and shows signs of scorching from fire.
Scrawled in what appears to be spray paint on the mosque compound wall is the phrase "blood wanted," which Iraqis say has appeared on many structures in areas of heavy Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict throughout Baghdad.
The phrase is a warning to the sect that is the minority in the neighborhood, Sunnis in the case of the region around the Mustafa mosque in Hurriyah, that they will be killed if they return.
Under Saddam Hussein's regime, the government imposed censorship on local media and severely restricted foreign media coverage, monitoring transmissions and sending secret police to follow journalists. Those who violated the rules were expelled and in some cases jailed.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4370632.html
Associated Press stands by story about Iraq executions outside mosque
Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, December 1, 2006
WASHINGTON — The Associated Press is standing by an Iraqi police source and his description of a Nov. 24 execution of six men outside a Sunni mosque despite a U.S. military statement that neither is real.
Last week, the AP released a story that a gang of armed Shiites attacked the Mustafa Sunni mosque in Baghdad, dragged six worshippers outside, doused them with kerosene and set them on fire.
At the time, the main source in the report was police Capt. Jamil Hussein, a man frequently quoted in AP reports and by others about violence in the area.
Last weekend, the Multi-National Corps–Iraq Joint Operations Center released a statement that “neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story,” and asked for a retraction of the story.
Lt. Michael Dean, spokesman for MNC-I, also added that U.S. officials have no record of Hussein as a Baghdad police officer or an Iraq Ministry of Interior employee.
AP officials responded earlier this week with a second report supporting their description of the attack, this time referencing three anonymous witnesses in addition to the previous sources.
AP’s use of Hussein in stories has become a major issue for military and conservative bloggers, who claim it brings into question all of the wire service’s reports from Iraq.
At one the first sites to post the MNC-I statement, www.floppingaces.net, moderators have raised questions about 10 other AP stories where Hussein was quoted, and whether the issue points to carelessness or bias on behalf of the news organization.
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=41856
Remember this post way back last Saturday. I may have been the first to question the source.
Yes of course I remember that. However I am still not swayed. :)
Ping
TexKat I'm going to use your pinglist, hope it's alright. If anyone has a problem please let me know.
AP Gets Caught Working For The Enemy (SHOCKING NEWS ALERT)
Strategypage ^ | 11/30/06
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1746348/posts
Posted on 11/30/2006 8:16:12 AM CST by Valin
November 30, 2006: Two blogs, Gateway Pundit and Flopping Aces, have uncovered what appears to be a serious screw-up by the Associated Press in its coverage of Iraq. It appears that this American media outlet passed on terrorist propaganda, perhaps willingly. The mistake in question involves at least ten stories since April 27 in which a Captain Jemil Hussein was a source. Six of these stories involved alleged massacres of Sunni Arabs. Four others involved unknown victims. A second AP source in the Iraqi police, Lieutenant Maithem Abdul Rizzaq, is also proving to be nonexistent, according to Central Command and the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. This is not the first time the media has been caught with bad stories and invented sources, but this is the most serious.
(snip)
Whoa....this is BIG...I think a boycott on using AP for a source is in order....along with Reuters.
So Just Who Is Capt. Jamil Hussein? _ NY TIMES
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/so-just-who-is-capt-jamil-hussein/
Dwelling on the validity of one tragic incident is pointless given the hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths that certainly have occurred in Iraq since the war began. It is time Americans closely examine the consequences of the ongoing US War in Iraq and demand immediate policy changes.
— Posted by Tom Williams
3.November 30th,
2006
11:38 am So the AP thinks it’s “ludicrous” for anyone (but them) to question why something appears in their feed that can’t be susbstantiated. And the writer, here, poses “an e-mail to the AP “somehow” found its way to the blog , etc.” (quote marks mine). And that’s written by a reporter for The New York Times, the epitome of “leaked” memos.
— Posted by Charlie McCartan
4.November 30th,
2006
11:47 am Indeed, who is “police Capt. Jamil Hussein”?
This question is huge, and cannot be swept under the rug. It goes to the heart of the issue whether “the Associated Press — and the media at large” is honest and truthful, or whether they make things up.
It could be that “police Capt. Jamil Hussein” is a real, live police captain who (unbeknownst to AP) used a phoney name in speaking with them. Or it could be that AP knew the name was phoney, but decided to go along with it anyhow, thereby choosing to deceive its readers on a fact of lesser importance.
Or, it could be that AP made up the whole story, which seems to be the most likely explanation.
In any event, AP’s credibility is now gone, & will not return until it fesses up to the entire story, including who is “police Capt. Jamil Hussein”?
— Posted by Jerry Desmond
5.November 30th,
2006
11:50 am You asked in your intriguing headline “Just who is Cpt. Jamil Hussein?”
After reading this “he said…she said” neither you nor the AP are closer to the answer.
So, send Mr. Filkins, your man in Iraq, into the neighborhood and seek out Mr. Hussein.
— Posted by michael keating
Begs the question, Why doesn't AP produce Capt. Jamil Hussein? If he's a regular source of theirs it shouldn't really be a problem to produce him.
I haven't read all the posts yet, but I find it interesting that no one was particularly surprised when it allegedly happened.
I wonder how many people, when they read the now-disproved story thought, "Shiites torching a bunch of Sunnis (or vice versa)? Kinda disgusting but it seem like something they would do."
The shock is that the story is false.
Without respect to whether this story is true or not, the headline "It's Official" is misleading. It seems to suggest that it has been definitively, affirmatively, shown that the story is bogus, and I don't get that from the article. Am I missing something?
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