Posted on 12/08/2006 12:44:21 PM PST by Anti-Bubba182
NEW YORK Charges that The Associated Press had been duped into running a false story on six Iraqis who were allegedly set on fire two weeks ago -- and had used as a source a supposedly fictional Iraqi police captain -- have continued to emerge from conservative bloggers and pundits, despite AP denials and its further reporting on the incident.
The U.S. military has questioned the story and some Iraqi officials more recently asserted that the police captain did not exist.
On Friday, Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press, issued another lengthy statement on the matter. She strongly defended the AP's account and sourcing and denounced criticism of its Iraqi correspondents. "Questioning their integrity and work ethic is simply offensive," she wrote. "It's awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad.".........."
(Excerpt) Read more at editorandpublisher.com ...
Another CBS Dan Blather, NY Slimes reporting schemes. Reminds me of that article I read earlier this week about lies and schemes by the pro-demoncRAT media:
Media Bias Confirmed
By Roger Aronoff
December 4, 2006
Some smart liberals in the media are figuring out that it's no longer tenable to deny they are biased. That claim flies like a lead balloon. So they're admitting it up front, in the hope that conservatives might start coming back to some of the old media and preventing a further decline in their listening or viewing audiences. Such an admission was recently made by Mark Halperin of ABC News.
Some history is in order. Surveys demonstrating a liberal or pro-Democratic Party bias by the national press corps go back 40 years. One of the most interesting, a 1996 survey from the Freedom Forum, showed that 89 percent of the reporters in Washington said they had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, while only seven percent said they voted for George Bush.
Some say that journalists are trained to keep their bias out of their stories, but that assumes they practice objective news reporting. In fact, reporters have been taught interpretive reporting for decades. That opens the door to bias influencing not only the selection of news items but how the news is presented. And since most of those entering the journalism field are liberals, that creates a liberal bias.
Some of the best evidence of bias comes from some of those reporters and editors who openly acknowledge it, sometimes when they are caught off guard, other times when they know full well that they are breaking ranks, and telling us things that their brethren wish they hadn't said.
We have documented many of those instances:
- When ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran told radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt that there is "a deep anti-military bias in the media." Added Moran, "One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous;"
- When Newsweek's Evan Thomas said that media bias was worth five to 15 percentage points, meaning anywhere between five and 20 million votes for the Kerry-Edwards ticket in the 2004 election; and
- Bernard Goldberg's book "Bias," exposing the liberal environment at CBS and other networks, and the importance of holding the "correct" worldview.
- Daniel Okrent, the former Public Editor of the New York Times, wrote a column asking, "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper." Regarding social issues, he wrote, "if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed." As for its editorial page, Okrent wrote that is "so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right."
- Thomas Edsall, former top political reporter for the Washington Post, told Hugh Hewitt that Democrats outnumber Republicans in the press corps by a factor of 15 or 25 to 1.
Mark Halperin, ABC News political director and blogger of The Note on the ABC website, now gets added to this list.
Before the November 7 elections, he wrote about the (liberal) Old Media in a piece called "Six Days of November Surprises," describing what to expect in terms of coverage. One was a flowing profile of "Speaker-Inevitable Nancy Pelosi," which took place on 60 Minutes.
As if to rub it in, Halperin went on "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox News Channel, with Bill O'Reilly. He said, "We've got a chance in these last two weeks to prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances, we're going to try to do better, but these organizations [the Washington Post, New York Times, CBS, ABC, etc.] still have incredible sway and these conservatives are certain that we're going to be out to get them. We've got to fix that."
O'Reilly said, "So you're admitting you tilt left?" Halperin, who with the Washington Post's John Harris has written a book called The Way to Win in 2008, told O'Reilly that "over the years there are a lot of examples: what CBS News did in the 2004 election with the President's 2004 National Guard record. Lots of examples. If I were conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break at the end of an election. We've got to make sure we do better so conservatives don't have to be concerned about that. It's not fair."
O'Reilly asked, "So you're the fairness police now at ABC?
"No, we should be impartial," said Halperin. "We should use this last two weeks as an opportunity to help rebuild our reputation with half the country, so conservatives can be confident."
He added that "There are no strategy calls. We're not on the phone with Howard Dean and George Soros getting our marching orders. But the mindset at ABC...is just too focused on being more favorable to Nancy Pelosi, say, than Newt Gingrich, being more down on the Republicans' chances than perhaps is warranted. Singling out, you're seeing here a 60 Minutes piece about Nancy Pelosi. I don't remember Newt Gingrich getting a piece that favorable in 1994."
Finishing up on the topic, Halperin said, "I think everybody in the old media better be watching pieces like that, reading profiles of Nancy Pelosi and saying, are we being fair to everybody involved in the American political process. Even if you don't believe the argument that we make in The Way to Win there are some examples over the years that are pretty significant of showing why conservatives are aggrieved. Even if you're a liberal and don't believe that, believe that half the country feels that way. And it's an economic model. If you want to thrive like Fox News Channel, you want to have a future, you better make sure conservatives find your product appealing. If you're going to do the right thing, you've got to do it."
Halperin may be trying to appear fair and impartial in order to sell his book to conservatives. But there is no reason to doubt his characterization of the press corps. It comports with the evidence and the facts.
Thanks, Mr. Halperin, for confirming what we already know. If your admissions are not just motivated by a desire to sell a book, you can demonstrate your sincerity by eliminating the liberal bias where you work on a daily basis. You have a lot of work to do. Don't let us down.
Well, is it true or is it false? There are either six burned bodies or there are none. The AP either was duped or willingly complied.......
Find later bump
A big part of this story was that it was reported that Iraqi troops watched the whole event and did nothing.
I still don't have an answer to your question though.
They are stonewalling and harrumphing in hopes they can quell criticism.
Produce the source!
Hang them for treason.
>>Produce the source!
That's what CENTCOM called on them to do. So far, nothing but < crickets> and the aggreived screams discussed here.
This woman at the AP makes Mary Mapes look like a rocket scientist. This letter shows a very poor understand of exposition and proof. As Friday said, the facts, ma'am, just the facts. She's got more excuses and attitude than facts.
Kathleen Carroll, Senior Vice President, Executive Editor
450 W. 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-621-1610
Email: kcarroll@ap.org
Iraqi police Captain Jamil Hussein either exists or he does not. The AP denial only asserts his existence, while failing to confirm it.
What's offensive is that they (AP) did not and does not question "their" integrity and work ethic.
Of course, if "Jamil Hussein" doesn't exist, there's no one to question now, is there?
From Iraq, this is Kathleen Carroll, reporting.
I sure wish the other members of the media would care about this scandal. They should be demanding that the AP produce the source. Otherwise, any AP article, at least as it relates to Iraq, is automatically going to be suspect, and this can only cause further damage to the news media that get their stories from the AP.
If I were an AP director I'd be plenty angry at the public response thus far.
"It's awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad..........."
And it's awfully easy to sit in a hotel rooom in the Green Zone and report stories without having the foggiest. Or at least not really caring.
Every single one of the troops in Iraq, including my brother, knew what they were getting into, so quit using them as pawns in your moan game.
alla the bloggers have said the AP can prove their case by having Capt Hussein show up at a press conference in his uniform. So far they refuse.
In the days after the 1994 election C-SPAN had a panel of journos and one was from the Baltimore Sun ("Susan" something-or-other).
I called and asked her why the Sun hadn't written one single word about the Republican Contract With America, which was announced in days before the election and seemed to be a fairly noteworthy event.
Answer: "We thought it was a PR stunt" (though her manner belied her obvious embarrassment at such a flimsy excuse), to which I said in disbelief "You think the announcement of a 10-point party platform by the entire Republican House is PR?? That's odd. How do you distinguish between news and PR??"
That was enough for "Susan". Now a completely different tack: "We ran a wire story on it I think".
Nope, you didn't. After the call I went through several days of back issues of the Sun, and there was not a single word on the Contract With America. Not from the Sun, not from the wires.
Which goes to show that not only will a liberal rag like the Sun spike the news that it doesn't like, but they'll lie about it when caught red-handed.
That would never happen. Much of what newspapers and broadcast media report on is based on AP material. If AP is revealed as slipshod and biased, where does that leave them, especially since they usually take AP material as true without criticism?
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