Mycroft, post # 136, from page 4:
They responded by poo-pooing their critics.
No. That is an inaccurate characterization.
To pooh-pooh one's critics implies that instead of making a substantive response to the points people raise one simply dismisses them with insults or ridicule. If you take the time to read Kathleen Carroll's response, you will see that is not what she has done.
Kathleen Carroll's response is a substantive statement as to why AP believes its reporting on the incident was accurate, including details about their past relationship with Jamil Hussein and details of steps they have taken to confirm the key points of their report. These make up the bulk of what she wrote.
The first 5 sentences (about 7 lines) and the final 6 sentences (about 7 lines) introduce and summarize her lengthy response. Are these the "poo-pooing" you refer to? Here's the essence of her introduction:
In recent days, a handful of people have stridently criticized The Associated Press’ coverage of a terrible attack... 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...
And here's the essence of her conclusion:
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.
The comment about "
whipped themselves into an indignant lather..." and "
It's awfully easy to take pot shots from the safety of a computer keyboard ..." are sharp rebukes to AP's critics, as is the references to them writing "
stridently". I do not equate all criticism of one's critics with pooh-poohing -- but if you do, then those comments could be labelled pooh-poohing. (So, likewise, could a great many of your own. But that is a separate matter.)
In between the introduction and the conclusion is the body of her statement -- about 40 sentences (more than 60 lines). Let's look at some typical passages. I'm going to color code statements which detail why AP stands behind their reporting in
blue, and statements in which Carroll rebukes her critics in
red.
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.
That is a statement of fact rather than a dismissal of critics.
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.
This combines an important point about the controversy -- that AP has actually sent people into the neighborhood to investigate the story -- with a slap at those who have not. Personally, I think the slap is a mistake, because it puts attention on the fact the bloggers have not gone to the neighborhood and thereby takes away attention from the more important point -- which is that
Michael Dean and MOI have not said whether they actually went to the neighborhood to investigate the report. Since AP says it did find evidence, and Dean/MOI say they did not, the question of what exactly the MOI investigation consisted of is an important one.
... police Capt. Jamil Hussein ... was one (but not the only) source to tell us about the burning ...
This is a substantive point concerning evidence of the validity of the underlying story.
... a U.S. military officer and an Iraqi official ... 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.
This is a substantive point about the alleged MOI record check.
... 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.
That's a subtantive point concerning evidence that Jamil Hussein exists.
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's another substantive point, and one I would like to see addressed by MOI. Why did MOI say nothing about Jamil Hussein prior to this incident? Were they unaware that he was being quoted in news stories? If Jamil Hussein is in fact not a police officer, it is odd that it took so long for MOI to realize this. That does not speak well for their competence or their records. It also raises the question of why no one al-Yarmouk police station has ever publicly questioned his existence. (Rikzilla claimed
back on page 1 of this thread that Iraqi police had questioned his existence -- but still has not named a single Iraqi police officer who has said so, nor provided a link to any story in which even an unnamed Iraqi police officer is quoted as saying that.)
That neighborhood, Hurriyah, is a particularly violent section of Baghdad....[It] 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.
This is a substantive point explaining the difficulty in getting on-the-record quotes. It is followed by 7 paragraphs of supporting facts about violence in the area and threats against Sunnis living there.
... 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.”
This is a substantive point regarding the lack of credibility of the MOI.
The final section of the response is a strong statement of support for the reporters who work for AP, ending with a slap at the critics:
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.
An AP cameraman was shot to death a few days after Carroll wrote this response, making the third AP employee to be killed in Iraq while attempting to do his job. Nearly 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq so far. That makes it galling when right-wing bloggers claim these journalists are "way too cozy with terrorists" and declare that
"The media are the enemy".
A_unique_person linked to a good example of this kind of vileness from Michelle Malkin. As someone who frequents Little Green Footballs and other sites of that ilk, you must be aware of how they routinely insinuate that AP is collaborating with terrorists. Have you held these sites to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof over which which you are condemning AP? I would be interested in seeing links to posts where you have insisted these bloggers either back up their charges with unimpeachable evidence or retract and apologize for such accusations.
Kathleen Carroll was angry -- and she had a right to be. She was right that what Malkin, Johnson, and others have written is strident. She was right that these people were speaking with excessive certainty about things they had no personal knowledge of. And she was right that their claims about AP reporters being liars who are working with the terrorists is offensive.
Perhaps you have become so inured to the over-blown rhetoric which Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and others have been producing routinely -- and which posters at right-wing blogs delight in echoing and expanding -- that you no have become tone-deaf to offensiveness. If so, that's a pity. You read Little Green Footballs insinuating AP and their employees are collaborating with the enemy, and it apparently doesn't even register as offensive to you. But you read Kathleen Carroll pointing out the rudeness of such remarks, and
that upsets you.
The letter by Kathleen Connell which you take offense at is relatively mild. It contains three rebukes to the bloggers in the introduction/conclusion, and two additional rebukes in the body -- a total of five. The only one of these which might be classed as over-blown is the metaphorical "whipped themselves into an indignant lather". Kathleen Connell sets a far higher standard for civility and restraint than the blogs you've linked to (without a word of criticism on your part) in this thread. To single her letter out for criticism, and to dismiss a substantive response as mere "poo-pooing", is another good example of your inability to apply the same standards to sources you like as you do to sources you dislike..
