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By Charles Bird Posted in Miscellanea | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Jamil Hussein has appeared as an AP source in 60± news stories. The most spectacular item was the one about four mosques being destroyed and six Sunnis being burned alive. As it turns out, at worst, one mosque was destroyed and there is no evidence that anyone was murdered via torching.

When challenged on the veracity of the story, AP editors went on the offensive and attacked those who questioned its sources, playing the typical motive-impugning game that we see all too often from the hardline Liberal-Left. Apparently, to AP, the motives of government sources are always in question yet the motives of its own sources are pure as the driven snow. AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll still stands by Jamil Hussein, even though the man cannot be located anywhere, and even though both Iraqi and American government officials deny that Jamil Hussein is a police captain or spokesman for the Iraqi police.

Read on . . .
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The latest journalist calling out AP is none other than Eason Jordan, the former CNN news executive who faced his own blogstorm and ended up resigning because of his unsupportable off-the-record remarks that American troops were deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. His final paragraphs on AP's problem:

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.

It is striking that no one has been able to find a family member, friend, or colleague of Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP told us who in the AP's ranks has actually spoken with Captain Hussein. Nor has the AP quoted Captain Hussein once since the story of the disputed episode.

Therefore, in the absence of clear and compelling evidence to corroborate the AP's exclusive story and Captain Hussein's existence, we must conclude for now that the AP's reporting in this case was flawed.

To make matters worse, Captain Jamil Hussein was a key named source in more than 60 AP stories on at least 25 supposed violent incidents over eight months.

Until this controversy is resolved, every one of those AP reports is tainted.

When two governments challenge the veracity of your reporting, when there are reasonable doubts about whether your prime named source for a sensational exclusive story exists, when there's no proof a reported horrific incident occurred, when the news outlet responsible for the disputed report stonewalls and is stridently defensive, when the validity of dozens of other of your reports has been called into question as a result, then that news organization has a scandal on its hands, and that is where the AP finds itself.

Having learned from my own successes and failures and those of others, I know that a journalistic scandal can be handled effectively only when the news organization's management deals with it proactively, constructively, and transparently, with a readiness to admit any mistake, to apologize for it, and to take appropriate corrective action.

The AP has failed to do so in this case.

I, therefore, urge the AP to appoint an independent panel to determine the facts about the disputed report, to determine whether Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein exists, and to share the panel's full findings and recommendations with the public.

Until this matter is resolved, the AP's credibility will suffer.

Meantime, IraqSlogger and others will doggedly pursue the truth in this case.

Perhaps Mr. Jordan has learned from his own experience that the worst thing journalists and media organizations can do is to put up the stone wall and attack those who question them. Instead of forthrightly answering the concerns of its readers, AP is trying to ignore the controversy. This should not stand, and this is all the more troubling because hundreds--perhaps thousands--of media outlets subscribe to AP newsfeeds.

Not satisfied with waiting for its own internal investigation, Confederate Yankee mounted his own Herculean effort, doing the the work AP should have published, checking out each AP story that named Jamil Hussein as a source. This doesn't even count the unknown number of stories over the months where Hussein may have been anonymously identified as "an Iraqi Police Captain" or "according to the Iraqi Police". CY's final paragraphs:

At this point, I've attempted to find independent verification by outside news agencies for specific events claimed in a total of 40 AP news stories, roughly two-thirds of the Flopping Aces-produced total of 61 [cite], where Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein was cited as a source. I'm convinced I've done enough to establish questionable reporting and sourcing, and see no need to finish out the reaming Hussein-attributed accounts, though if someone would like to tackle the remaining third, I'd be interested to see their results.

I've used the Google search engine to hunt down examples of the original articles as they've run unquestioningly in newspapers and even in official government press releases around the world. I've then chosen keywords and dates from these claims made by the incorporeal Captain, and searched for them, in the hopes that Reuters, or the Washington Post, or AFP, or the New York Times could provide independent verification of these same claims.

In 40 attempts, I have not been able to verify a single AP story, though I think I may be able to eventually provide evidence supporting the assassinations of up to four stories involving the assassination of two Iraqi government employees, courtesy of the same MNF-I PAO and CPATT officials that the Associated Press has gone out of their way to disparage.

My conclusions from this exercise are published here.

Confederate Yankee doesn't have access to Lexis-Nexis or free access to other resources, yet what he found--or didn't find as it were--is startling. It raises the big question that, if one of AP's sources in at least 60 stories is a fraud, are there other sources who are likewise as phony as a $3 bill? And if so, how many? Curt at Flopping Aces suggests that several other AP reporters and sources have bias and credibility issues. Given AP's past behavior, Curt's assertions should be taken seriously, and they should merit further scrutiny.

This doesn't mean the real story in Iraq is all good news and happiness. But at the same time, it appears likely that the American people are getting fed "news" that is skewed the other way, painted in a manner that puts our country and our efforts in a worse light than is the reality. This is why I believe that, until AP comes clean and shows us otherwise, their coverage of events in Iraq is tainted and that they are uncritically transmitting enemy propaganda.

AP isn't the only news organization that has trouble with blogs, or with facing facts when the Rubber Fish of Truth is slapped upside their heads. The LA Times suffers the same malady, as Patterico so aptly pointed out in his 2006 year in review.