We've written about the fact that the wire services employ stringers in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, who are of doubtful reliability at best. Worse, these stringers sometimes have a political agenda. As a result, the "news" that the Associated Press reports as fact has sometimes turned out to be based on little more than rumor, or to be fabricated altogether.

The latest example comes from Bob Owens, who sums up the story at Pajamas Media. On June 28, the AP reported that 20 decapitated bodies had been found in a village near Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad. If you read the fine print, though, it turned out that the story was based on reports from two anonymous "police officers"--one from Baghdad and one from Kut, some 75 miles from the scene of the alleged atrocity. It was apparent on the face of the AP story that these officers' claims were hearsay, at best.

Owens details how the story was re-told in subtly different ways by news outlets that picked up the AP account. The Washington Post, for example, "actively obfuscated the distant locations of the anonymous police sources, and instead merely allowed that the came from 'separate commands.' The Post account also rewrote the story in such a way that it appears that there were three anonymous police sources."

Owens was no doubt reminded of the infamous "Jamil Hussein," the Baghdad policeman (if such he was) who long served the AP as a "source" for events all over Iraq, some of which never happened. So Owens decided to investigate by contacting the Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) Public Affairs office, and liaisons with the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) Public Affairs Office, to ask what they knew of this incident. The upshot was a definitive statement by those agencies that the beheading story was “completely false and fabricated by unknown sources."

The AP issued a sort-of correction which reported the U.S. military's denial that the incident had taken place. The AP did not try to stand by its story, and passed along the military's observation that "[a]nti-Iraqi Forces are known for purposely providing false information to the media to incite violence and revenge killings, and they may well have been the source of this misinformation." This fact, of course, should already have been well-known to the AP, but there is nothing to suggest that the lesson has been taken to heart.

A commenter on the Pajamas Media site makes an excellent point: mass murder isn't hard to find in Iraq, but it isn't necessarily of the kind that Western media seem eager to report. As we noted here, Michael Yon documented, just a few days ago, the massacre--complete with decapitations--of an Iraqi village by al Qaeda. Yet the Associated Press has not reported on this very real atrocity.

Just a few hours ago, Yon expressed puzzlement over the mainstream media's failure to follow up on the massacre that he documented with interviews and photographs. He even offered his text and photographs, free of charge, to any media outlets willing to re-publish them. I think it is outrageous that the AP will publish reports of mass murders based on hearsay accounts by pro-insurgent stringers, but will not report on a thoroughly documented, actual massacre by al Qaeda. Unlike Yon, however, I don't find the fact puzzling.

UPDATE: Normally I wouldn't just blatantly steal from Glenn Reynolds, or anyone else. But this is a must-read, so I'm going to reproduce Glenn's post. You should go here every day to keep up with one of the internet's smartest and most even-tempered guys. And now, on with the theft:

WHY DON'T AL QAEDA ATROCITIES GET MEDIA ATTENTION?

Because that might help Bush.

UPDATE: A journalist whose name you'd recognize emails:

Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.

It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can’t do squat about such determined use of force.

Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.

So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. - doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can ‘fix’ with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we ‘fix’ them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.

Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.

We knew that. But it's great to see someone in the industry acknowledge it.

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Posted by John at 05:01 PM  |    |