Posted on 01/02/2007 6:56:58 PM PST by faq
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 Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein as the source of a sensational AP story that began this way:
“Militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by.”
It was a horrific report that was an AP exclusive - a story picked up and reported by news outlets across the U.S. and the world.
The U.S. military and Iraqi officials were quick to call the story baseless, saying there was no evidence that six Sunnis were burned to death in Hurriya and that there was no record of an Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. The U.S. military and the Iraqi government demanded the AP retract the story and explain itself.
The AP fired back with at least three strong statements defending the initial AP report and provided a follow-up report from Baghdad quoting anonymous witnesses as confirming the original immolation story.
In the absence of irrefutable evidence that Captain Hussein exists and that the original AP report was accurate, bloggers and a few mainstream media journalists kept plugging away in an effort to get to the truth about whether there is a Captain Hussein and whether six Sunnis were burned alive that day.
Five weeks after the disputed episode, key questions remain unanswered, but what is clear is the AP has botched its handling of this controversy - and it’s not going away until the AP deals with it forthrightly and transparently.
IraqSlogger’s probe into the case is inconclusive, with conflicting and unconfirmed information regarding whether there’s a Captain Hussein and whether the reported immolation happened. Inquiries by others point to there being no Captain Jamil Hussein, although there is no proof of that.
While proof might yet surface to substantiate the AP’s story - there is circumstantial but unreliable evidence in that regard - conclusive evidence has not yet materialized.
The AP has steadfastly refused to answer questions about this episode from IraqSlogger and other news outlets and bloggers.
In statements, the AP insists Captain Hussein is real, insists he has been known to the AP and others for years, and insists the immolation episode occurred based on multiple eyewitnesses.
But efforts by two governments, several news organizations, and bloggers have failed to produce such evidence or proof that there is a Captain Jamil Hussein. The AP cannot or will not produce him or convincing evidence of his existence.
Also see Confederate Yankee for an in-depth examination of the more than 60 reports attributed to Jamil Hussein—reports that are almost completely uncorroborated by other sources.
UPDATE at 1/2/07 5:11:59 pm:
The Associated Press continues stonewalling. (Hat tip: Allahpundit.)
Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, told E&P today that she had not read Jordan’s latest item, posted Monday, and likely would not. But she stood by the news organization’s previous statements backing the existence of an Iraqi police captain, Jamail Hussein.
“I’ve been pretty public about what we have done to get to the crux of the criticism we have gotten about it,” she added. When asked about critics’ demands that AP produce Hussein to prove his existence, she said “that area [where he works] has pretty much been ethnically cleansed, it is a nasty place and continues to be.”
Carroll said that Hussein “is a guy we’ve talked to for years,” adding that “we don’t have anything new to say about it, nothing new to add.”
Agreed.
That is a big story in-and-of-itself.
Yep.
Saul did become Paul and this is sorta close to damascus but....naw.
Who knows, maybe this guy will surprise us and become "Paul". I admit I'm a skeptic, I'll believe it when I see it!
Amanda Huginkiss
Ben Dover
Ilene Dover
Heywood Jablowmey
Eason added that from the Muslim world any of the names from that DeNiro skit on SNL are also acceptable.
You're right. Who knows?
Kathleen Carroll, ARROGANT BUTCH senior vice president and executive editor of The Associated Press
2007 IS THE YEAR SHE AND HER MINOR LEAGUE PROPAGANDISTS MINIONS WILL BE EXPOSED AND THE AP DESTROYED.
12/08/06
AP Statement
Kathleen Carroll
Executive Editor and Senior Vice President
The Associated Press
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 declare that they don't believe our reporting.
Indeed, a small number of them have whipped themselves into an indignant lather over the AP's reporting.
Their assertions that the AP has been duped or worse are unfounded and just plain wrong.
No organization has done more to try to shed light on what happened Nov. 24 in the Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad than The Associated Press.
We have sent journalists to the neighborhood three different times to talk with people there about what happened. And those residents have repeatedly told us, in some detail, that Shiite militiamen dragged six Sunni worshippers from a mosque, drenched them with kerosene and burned them alive.
No one else has said they have actually gone to the neighborhood. Particularly not the individuals who have criticized our journalism with such barbed certitude.
The AP has been transparent and fair since the first day of our reporting on this issue.
We have not ignored the questions about our work raised by the U.S. military and later, by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Indeed, we published those questions while also sending AP journalists back out to the scene to dig further into what happened and why others might be questioning the initial accounts.
The AP mission was to get at the facts, wherever those facts took us.
What we found were more witnesses who described the attack in particular detail as well as describing the fear that runs through the neighborhood. We ran a lengthy story on those additional findings, as well as the questions, on Nov. 28.
Some of AP's critics question the existence of police Capt. Jamil Hussein, who was one (but not the only) source to tell us about the burning.
These critics cite a U.S. military officer and an Iraqi official who first said Hussein is not an authorized spokesman and later said he is not on their list of Interior Ministry employees. It’s worth noting that such lists are relatively recent creations of the fledgling Iraqi government.
By contrast, Hussein is well known to AP. We first met him, in uniform, in a police station, some two years ago. We have talked with him a number of times since then and he has been a reliable source of accurate information on a variety of events in Baghdad.
No one – not a single person – raised questions about Hussein’s accuracy or his very existence in all that time. Those questions were raised only after he was quoted by name describing a terrible attack in a neighborhood that U.S. and Iraqi forces have struggled to make safe.
That neighborhood, Hurriyah, is a particularly violent section of Baghdad. Once a Sunni enclave, it now is dominated by gunmen loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many people there talked to us about the attack, but clammed up when they realized they might be quoted publicly. They felt understandably nervous about bringing their accusations up in an area patrolled by a Shiite-led police force that they suspect is allied with the very militia accused in these killings.
Here's how AP veteran Patrick Quinn described life in Hurriyah on Oct. 11 this year:
"By early October, Shiite militiamen were roaming the streets of Hurriyah, kidnapping, killing and intimidating Sunnis. Handbills circulating this fall warned that 10 Sunnis would die for every Shiite killed.’’
In a Nov. 22 story on how October was the deadliest month on record for Iraqi civilians, AP Baghdad bureau chief Steve Hurst wrote: “Lynchings have been reported as Sunnis and Shiites conduct a merciless campaign of revenge killings.
“Some Shiite residents in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah claim that militiamen and death squads are holding Sunni captives in warehouses, then slaughtering them at the funerals of Shiites killed in the tit-for-tat murders.”
No one from the Iraqi Interior Ministry or the U.S. military complained about those descriptions. In fact, soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, 172nd Stryker Brigade were dispatched to Hurriyah late this summer to try to bring it under control.
AP’s Lauren Frayer, embedded with the 172nd during the Hurriyah deployment, described their efforts in early November. Capt. R. Tyler Willbanks, from Gallatin, Tenn., said “there were 25 dead bodies a day before we got here…" a number they got down to three a day before the latest eruption at the end of November.
The story of the burnings has gotten far more attention in the United States than in Iraq, where vicious torture and death are sadly commonplace. Dozens of Iraqi citizens are gunned down in their cars, dragged from their homes or blown apart in public places every single day.
As careful followers of the Iraq story know well, various militias have been accused of operating within the Interior Ministry, which controls the police and has long worked to suppress news of death-squad activity in its ranks. (This is the same ministry that questioned Capt. Hussein’s existence and last week announced plans to take legal action against journalists who report news that creates the impression that security in Iraq is bad, “when the facts are totally different.”)
The Iraqi journalists who work for the AP are smart, dedicated and incredibly courageous to go into the streets every day, talking to their countrymen and trying to capture a portrait of their home in a historic and tumultuous period.
The work is dangerous: two people who work for AP have been killed since this war began in 2003. Many others have been hurt, some badly.
Several of AP's Iraqi journalists were victimized by Saddam Hussein’s regime and bear scars of his torture or the loss of relatives killed by his goons. Those journalists have no interest in furthering the chaos that makes daily life in Iraq so perilous. They want what any of us want: To be able to live and work without fear and raise their children in peace and safety.
Questioning their integrity and work ethic is simply offensive.
It's awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard thousands of miles from the chaos of Baghdad.
The Iraq war is one of hundreds of conflicts that AP journalists have covered in the past 160 years. Our only goal is to provide fair, impartial coverage of important human events as they unfold. We check our facts and check again.
That is what we have done in the case of the Hurriyah attack. And that is why we stand by our story.
----
All the MSM knows that the AP is a fraud but I can't figure out why they continue buying stories from them?
Queen Carroll does not like anyone "questioning".
She needs to be jailed.
I think this is huge. I decided that the MSM would ignore this to save their own reps.
LOL!
What an amazing attitude for somebody who works in the -- press.
Jordan's just angling to be Pres Hillary's press sec....
Queen Carroll needs to realize that their credibility is no longer questioned just by the keyboard warriors but is also now from within their own realm.
Jordan's coments posted with others in my website on this scandal, along with a pitch to support the Freepers
http://www.theusmat.com
The Associated Press is owned by over 1500 Newspaper Publishers.
Also was wondering if per chance Eason Jordan might think by writing such an article as this against the AP, he might regain some of his lost credibility. I know it sounds far fetched, but just a thought.
Wow, when Saddam's media butt-boy Eason Jordan takes you to task, AP, you know you have hit bottom in MSM bias and dishonesty. Maybe this is Jordan desperately trying to recoup some of his vanished credibility with an attack on such an easy target.... still it's always interesting when one MSM figure is sooooo embarrassed by something in the AP, NY Times, etc. that he can no longer remain silent (the usual mode among embarrassed libs when faced with something so indefensible that they no longer want to stick their necks our defending it).
That is what I think, too. However, here is the crux of the matter in my opinion.
The Iraqi journalists who work for the AP are smart, dedicated and incredibly courageous to go into the streets every day, talking to their countrymen and trying to capture a portrait of their home in a historic and tumultuous period.
Theses Iraqi "journalists" know the kind of stories AP and most other American media want and they give them what they want, true or not and usually not. The more anti-America and gruesome the better.
The non Arab speaking US reporters can't go into the areas to check these stories so they depend on the Iraqis to verify their own work, which they dutifully do. It is the same as Dan Rather's forged but true fiction.
It is also the same scam Eason Jordan ran with Saddam while at CNN. Maybe he is trying the old liberal everybody-does-it excuse.
Where is Dan Rather when we really need him?
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