Michelle Malkin, that nemisis of the left, has this column today on the Associate Press's use of unreliable sources in its stories coming from Iraq.
The latest is about a report that six Sunnis were burned alive while leaving a mosque after last Friday's services. The story quoted one "Police Captain Jamil Hussein" who said that nearby Iraqi soldiers did nothing to intervene in the massacre, nor in the torching of four Sunni mosques in the same area of Baghdad. As Malkin explains:
Just a few small problems with the massively publicized story:
1) "Police Capt. Jamil Hussein" is an unreliable, unauthorized spokesperson whom the military has warned the Associated Press about before.
2) The incident cannot be verified.
This is not unlike the story I discussed earlier this week that was published on Patterico's blog, this time about an L.A. Times story which uses an Iraqi stringer known for his ties to the insurgency.
There seems to be a trend in these stories coming out about atrocities in Iraq that either cannot be verified or have been flatly denied by U.S. officials. The trend is that U.S. news sources are refusing to correct these mistakes or, more importantly, not use suspect sources. Is it asking too much for journalists to use their highly-vaunted skepticism and objectivity towards those that benefit from these inflammatory (in every sense of the word) tales? Apparently so, because, according to the stories we get, the only crimes commited are by U.S. soldiers.
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