Right and Wong

Greyhawk

Via Michelle Malkin, a pointer to a NY Times blog discussion on the AP's "6 Sunnis burned alive" story.

In a meeting with us this afternoon, the A.P.’s executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, said again, passionately, “We have done everything we know how to do” to respond to the questions.

Insisting that their witness exists by "vigorously re-reporting" the same thing is apparently the limit - proving his existence is out of the question.

In a longer explanation of the AP position:

The executive editor of The Associated Press, Kathleen Carroll, in a meeting in her office Friday afternoon, explained that the agency had already done all it could to respond to the uncertainties by vigorously re-reporting the article, and suggested that to engage these questions — to continue to write about them — merely fueled a mad blog rabble that would never be satisfied.

Until offered actual proof, that is. But it is interesting to see that the NY Times is asking questions.

They also checked with their own reporter, Ed Wong, who replied as follows.

Hi Tom,
You ask me about what our own reporting shows about this incident. When we first heard of the event on Nov. 24, through the A.P. story and a man named Imad al-Hashemi talking about it on television, we had our Iraqi reporters make calls to people in the Hurriya neighborhood. Because of the curfew that day, everything had to be done by phone. We reached several people who told us about the mosque attacks, but said they had heard nothing of Sunni worshippers being burned alive. Any big news event travels quickly by word of mouth through Baghdad, aided by the enormous proliferation of cell phones here. Such an incident would have been so abominable that a great many of the residents in Hurriya, as well as in other Sunni Arab districts, would have been in an uproar over it. Hard-line Sunni Arab organizations such as the Muslim Scholars Association or the Iraqi Islamic Party would almost certainly have appeared on television that day or the next to denounce this specific incident. Iraqi clerics and politicians are not shy about doing this. Yet, as far as I know, there was no widespread talk of the incident. So I mentioned it only in passing in my report.
Best,
Edward Wong

Now, if I read that correctly he's saying "It seemed very likely to be a bogus story, so we only mentioned it in passing." Remember that rule from the style book the next time you see something mentioned "in passing" in the New York Times.

To his credit, he did include a cautionary disclaimer for careful readers in his original story:

Fanned by fear, rumors spread quickly throughout the day. In the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this.

But why worry about 6 people burned alive, when he'd already claimed this a few paragraphs prior:

From morning until afternoon, at least four mosques were attacked in Hurriya, a mixed neighborhood in the capital. Two were destroyed, and at least 5 Sunnis were killed and 10 wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. A hard-line Sunni Arab group, the Muslim Scholars Association, said 18 people had been killed when one of the mosques burned down.

Apparently a separate incident from the "6 Sunnis burned alive" claim - and one with no quotes from neighbors to support or dispute it, something admittedly within Ed's ability to deliver. As I've noted before, 18 is more than 6, and a "burned down" mosque is relatively easy enough to verify. Given Ed's passion for balanced reporting, it's unfortunate he failed to at least note the well known connection between the Association of Muslim Scholars and al Qaeda - opting instead for the ambiguous "hard line" descriptor. And yes, this is the same group that claimed 184 Sunni mosques had been attacked within hours of the Shrine bombing (and that now appears to be rupturing after their leader fled Iraq). Ed Wong reported their claims as fact back then, too - and declared that plans for the formation of Iraq's government were "in ruins". Small wonder if he harbors grudges against that government now.

Meanwhile, Tom Zeller, who wrote the Time blog items quoted above, notes in a longer article on the topic

It is important to find out if this really happened in order to separate the hyperbole from the merely horrible in Iraq, so that the horrible will still have meaning. Otherwise it will all become din.

And that is indeed the substance of the problem. In fact, it's likely that Americans, if confronted with an endless series of unsubstantiated horror stories from Iraq reported as fact - on top of the real death and destruction accompanying war - might even sooner give up altogether, start saying things like "we'll never be able to stop those people from killing each other" and insisting the troops come home now. (Note to NY Times readers: I'm using sarcasm in the previous line.)

But if the NY Times is serious about accurate reporting from Iraq, they might want to start examining the work of their own man on the scene, who's never met an unsubstantiated rumor of atrocity he found unfit to print.

Update: Heh.