Posted on 12/02/2006 10:27:15 PM PST by ferri
Iraq's Interior Ministry has formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and is vowing to take legal action against journalists who fail to correct stories the ministry deems to be incorrect.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said Thursday that 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 the 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.
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.
Associated Press stands by story AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll rejected the accusation.
"The implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information," she said.
Earlier in the week, the wire service said the captain, who gave his full name as Jamil Gholaiem Hussein, has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.
AP also found three other witnesses to the attack who described it in detail but would not allow their names to be published for fear of retribution.
Photos of the Mustafa mosque at the centre of the story show that it is badly damaged by explosives and displays signs of scorching from fire.
Interior Ministry says no bodies found Khalaf said the ministry had dispatched a team to the Hurriyah neighbourhood 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 multinational 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."
ABCNNBCBS will have a Cow, Right?
Legal action? In a war? Jeesh!
Conservative bloggers — principally Flopping Aces — had already been questioning the AP’s story, and Mr. Hussein in particular, and with this, it was off to the races.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/so-just-who-is-capt-jamil-hussein/
Now THERE'S a full-time job! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Empty out the Palestine Hotel!
They need to worry about getting an upper hand on their own country. Monitoring a plethora of news outlets is merely a distraction.
Is Kalaf saying they finally got rid of Bagdad Bob and now the AP has taken his place? Who would have thought?
How ironic that the king of false reporting is questioning the Associated Press.
In today's world, monitoring news and fighting to get correct news out is not a distraction. It is the ballgame.
We have a Democrat Congress and won't have the Supreme Court because the Democrats (and the Islamofascists they have allied themselves with) control most of the news.
Crack down on false news?
How can this be? The absolute right to publish false news is the bedrock principle of a free press. Just ask Dan Rather.
Why don't we just turn Kieth Olbermann over to him as a peace gesture?
Why don't we just turn Kieth Olbermann over to him as a peace gesture?
Can we take a lesson from the Iraq government?
oh man, what a great idea!!! imagine... :-/
I love it!!
It's sweepin' the country! :-)
Bump. Thanks for that link. :o)
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