AP source not who he claimed to be

[firecoins]

Can you cite one example where a mainstream news organization was clearly exposed reporting false information -- willfully or not -- and engaged in a conspiracy to coverup?

In 1993, Dateline NBC did a story that GM sport utility vehicles exploded during crashes. Dateline did "test" of their own to prove it. Turns out NBC rigged the vehicles.
http://www.amazon.com/National-Broadcasting-television-depicting-exploding/dp/B00092UUN6

 

[firecoins]

I'm not clear if the source was a first hand witness or not. If it was hearsay and if AP reported the information otherwise, they deserve to take some flack. However, that's not the claim that's being echoed about. The claim is that the source is fictitious. If this is the case, numerous people at AP are engaged in a conspiracy to willfully mislead the public -- not impossible, but not likely.

you assume it isn't likely. How are we to check its likelihood or not? The media says the source is an Iraqi police captain and the US military says he isn't. We have to take the word of one or the other. Both have reason to lie in my view for cya purposes.

I don't know that it is a willful conspiracy either.

 

[varwoche]

In 1993, Dateline NBC did a story that GM sport utility vehicles exploded during crashes. Dateline did "test" of their own to prove it. Turns out NBC rigged the vehicles.
http://www.amazon.com/National-Broadcasting-television-depicting-exploding/dp/B00092UUN6

At the risk of derailing, based on my recollection and a hasty google confirmation, this doesn't meet the criteria I posed. Dateline cheated (egregiously!) and got busted. I'm not aware that NBC subsequently engaged in a conspiracy to coverup, as is being claimed about AP.

 

[firecoins]

At the risk of derailing, based on my recollection and a hasty google confirmation, this doesn't meet the criteria I posed. Dateline cheated (egregiously!) and got busted. I'm not aware that NBC subsequently engaged in a conspiracy to coverup, as is being claimed about AP.

Your criteria excuses faking a news story. I think your criteria is wrong. I am sorry but NBC did deny "faking" it despite being caught red handed. GM uncovered the NBC story as b.s.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/nbc.html

 

[varwoche]

Your criteria excuses faking a news story. I think your criteria is wrong. I am sorry but NBC did deny "faking" it despite being caught red handed. GM uncovered the NBC story as b.s.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/nbc.html

No, I'm not excusing Dateline in the slightest. You must have overlooked where I characterized their actions as "egregious!"

There are many instances where rogue "journalists" have fabricated stories, and I condemn them unequivocally. The AP situation is more than that. AP has conducted further investigations to confirm the story.

If you don't like my criteria, please say so up-front. I would have disagreed, but that's fine. But don't move the goalposts and then gripe after the fact when called on it.

 

[Mycroft]

The claim is that the source is fictitious. If this is the case, numerous people at AP are engaged in a conspiracy to willfully mislead the public -- not impossible, but not likely.

Not at all.

The claim is that this person, Capt. Jamil Hussein is not an Iraqi policeman and doesn’t work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. For that to be true doesn’t require any conspiracy from anyone at the AP, only that one or more people at the AP had been conned by someone who represented themselves as being Capt. Jamil Hussein.

 

[firecoins]

Your right. I should have raised an objection before hand. However NBC conspired to write a false news story with the full expectation that they would not be caught doing so. They got caught.

Jason Blair was a rogue journalist at the NYT writing false stories for over a year. His direct bosses tried to fire him but middle and upper management allowed him to continue. THis was a reporting conspiracy but a major organizational problem.

Journalists & media outlets themselves can be manipulated into reporting false news. How do we know this Iraqi police agent is real? If he is, did he witness this event? How do we know he isn't an insurgent sympthizer manipulating trying to manipulate the media? The AP does nopt have to conspire to report a wrong story.

 

[Ziggurat]

There are many instances where rogue "journalists" have fabricated stories, and I condemn them unequivocally. The AP situation is more than that. AP has conducted further investigations to confirm the story.

Yeah, and Dan Rather and Mary Mapes verified the Bush Guard memo too. That wasn't just one lone journalist, that was a team which got suckered by a false source, and tried to back up that source rather than admit they got suckered. And I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if the AP would do the same thing here: spend their time trying to bolster the case that this guy is real rather than actually try to figure out whether or not he is. So the mere fact that they conducted "further investigations" simply isn't enough. If this guy's identity as a policeman is in doubt, they need to do more than talk to HIM, they need to ask his supposed employers if he actually works for them. That means getting confirmation from the Iraqi government. And to my knowledge, the AP hasn't done that yet.

 

[varwoche]

Not at all.

The claim is that this person, Capt. Jamil Hussein is not an Iraqi policeman and doesn’t work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. For that to be true doesn’t require any conspiracy from anyone at the AP, only that one or more people at the AP had been conned by someone who represented themselves as being Capt. Jamil Hussein.

True. The con would have to be quite elaborate though (of Mamet-like proportions) because as Nova Land points out in posts #3 and #7, AP met with the guy in his office on multiple occasions.

 

[WildCat]

True. The con would have to be quite elaborate though (of Mamet-like proportions) because as Nova Land points out in posts #3 and #7, AP met with the guy in what he claimed was his office on multiple occasions.

Fixed that for you.

 

[varwoche]

Fixed that for you.

Thanks! But if you're going to the trouble of correcting me, at least you could fill in the Mamet scenario thoroughly:

AP supposedly met with the guy in what he claimed was his office a police station on multiple occasions. And supposedly AP interviewed corroborating witnesses. And supposedly AP photographed (or photoshopped?) the shooting/fire damage in the Mosque where the incident supposedly occurred.

 

[WildCat]

Thanks! But if you're going to the trouble of correcting me, at least you could fill in the Mamet scenario thoroughly:

I have no idea about a "Mamet scenario", I'm just saying that the AP may have been conned.

 

[Nova Land]

No, actually, I was refering to a different incident entirely, but one in which LGF (and other "right wing" blogs) uncovered fraud on the part of Reuters: namely, faked photos from Lebanon.

Ah, so this isn't a case of Reuters vs AP (i.e. AP reporting one thing on this story and Reuters reporting another). Too bad. One of the best ways to settle this matter would be if a Reuters reporter were to accompany the AP reporter to verify (a) that Jamil Hussein exists, (b) that Jamil Hussein has an office in an Iraqi police station, and is recognized by people there as a police captain, and (c) that he told the AP reporter details about 6 Sunnis being burned to death.

But what you meant is that you were thinking about some incident involving Reuters which you feel is relevant to this incident involving AP. If so, then by all means make a specific claim regarding Reuters, present evidence for that claim, and then feel free to use that in support of your belief that AP is lying in this case.

I suspect, though, that once you present the details of the Reuters incident it will support my claim more than yours. (That is the case with several examples others have presented downthread.) You may not have understood my argument clearly, so before you spend much time looking up and presenting the Reuters incident you have in mind let me try to explain the point I am making about lies more clearly.

edited to add: Because the explanation is fairly long, I decided it might be more readable as a separate post of its own.

 

[Nova Land]

Sloppiness and carelessness are common human failings, so I would not be surprised if an AP reporter had been sloppy and got the facts wrong in the initial report. Deception is also a common human failing. Reputable news outlets try to avoid it, but it does occur -- so if AP had been deceptive in their reporting that wouldn't surprise me either.

But while deception is a fairly common human failing, most people prefer to deceive through omission, or through careful wording which seems to say one thing but actually says another, or other artful dodges, rather than through clearcut lies. Outright lying seems fairly rare, at least among normal adult professionals. Most adults like to leave themselves some wiggle room, which lets them claim (to themselves and to others) that what they said was 'not really a lie'.

I'm old-fashioned enough that I'd prefer to call such deceptions lies. But that's not the standard which a lot of people on this site prefer to use. In threads discussing whether George Bush and people in his administration lied, a number of posters have indicated they believe a stricter standard should be used before something can be classed as a lie. The statement has to be not simply wrong, but deliberately so. Errors, omissions, and misleading wordings do not count as lies under that standard.

And that is the standard I was using when I said in my previous post that AP would need to be lying. I am not talking about instances where someone said something which later turned out to be wrong. I am not talking about instances where someone was careless in their wording, or sloppy in their checking. I am not talking about instances where someone over-simplified a little, or over-stated a little, in order to make their words more understandable. I an not talking about instances where someone said something which sounds like it means one thing but actually means another. None of those is enough to account for what AP has said if they turn out to be incorrect on Hussein's existence. I said they would have to be lying, and lying is what I meant.

Media watchdog groups such as AIM and Media Matters routinely point out what they call lies, and if you are willing to accept their definition of a lie then lying is indeed common -- but these are generally cases where they don't like the emphasis or wording of a news report, not where there is a clear and deliberate misstatement of the facts. How many of the examples which Media Matters posts on their site are you willing to acknowledge as being valid examples of conservative media lies? How many would you defend as being something other than lies?

The Bush administration routinely engages in deceptive speech, but how many outright lies would you say they have told? (Well, yes -- Bush flatly lied a few weeks ago in answering the question about whether he was thinking of replacing Rumsfeld -- but that's an exception.) A lot of the general public certainly thought the Bush administration was saying Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 -- but Bush's people didn't actually say that, even though they seemed to be saying it. A lot of the general public certainly thought the Bush administration was saying Saddam Hussein was close to having nukes -- but later, after no WMD turned up, the Bush administration said that careful parsing of their words showed they hadn't actually said that, even though it had seemed at the time that they had. How many of the misleading and deceptive statements that the Bush administration has made over the past 6 years are you willing to acknowledge as being lies?

It should be noted that it is also common for there to be genuine differences of interpretation which can lead one party to think another has lied even when no deception was intended. It is impossible to speak so clearly that no one will ever misunderstand you. There are numerous cases where a person has said something which someone else thinks is false -- simply because the first person was a bit careless with their words and didn't realize what they said would be interpreted the way the listener took it. If we all took the time to triple-check every sentence we speak or write to make sure we haven't carelessly used the wrong word and to make sure there is no possible way to misinterpret what we're saying, nothing would ever get said or written.

In my experience, people generally try to tell the truth as they perceive it. Often their perception is wrong: they have been careless in their observation, and think they have seen things which they actually haven't. Often their reporting is wrong: in trying to express what they think is the truth, they over-state things a bit, or over-simplify things a bit, or color things a bit in order to make a better story. But generally they are not trying to lie -- stretch a bit, yes, but not lie. Most people don't like to think of themselves as liars.

When two people's accounts are contradictory, it is possible that one is lying. It is possible that both are lying. But it is more likely that both are telling the truth as they see it. I therefore look first for explanations based on the idea that all involved are telling the truth as they see it, and try to see if there is a reasonable explanation which takes that into account. People do lie on occasion, so one should always be alert for evidence of deliberate deception. But one should not be too hasty to assume that deliberate deception is at work.

Since careless errors are common (even among professional journalists, even among professional military spokespeople), and since evasive deceptions are common (even among professional journalists, even among professional military spokespeople), and since honest differences in interpretation of what people meant are common, but outright deliberate lies are relatively rare, then error or evasion or misunderstanding is a more likely explanation of conflicting claims than outright lies. The more people who need to be deliberately lying in order for an explanation to work, the more evidence I'd want to see before accepting that conspiracy theory as true.

Because that's what it is: a conspiracy theory. When people arrange to lie in concert, that's a conspiracy. And while conspiracies do occur, and should not be dismissed out of hand, they also should not simply be blindly accepted -- as you, and the right-wing bloggers, seem to be doing in this case.

 

[Nova Land]

That the person exists does not mean that the name he gave or the position he supposedly holds are real. To verify that, it is NOT, in fact, enough to just visit him. For that, the relevant check IS to ask the Iraqi government, and apparently the AP has not done that but the US military did.

If that is how you would test to determine the truth of this matter, then I am glad you are not the one conducting tests for Randi's million dollars. Given a choice between (a) being told that a record search turned up blank, and (b) actually going to the place the person is said to work and confirming whether he does exist and does works there, I'd pick the second as the preferable approach.

Checking records is a good way to see whether further investigation of a claim is needed, but for actually verifying the claim I'd want to -- well -- actually verify it.

Neither approach is foolproof, so care needs to be taken either way. With the record-checking approach, for instance, we'd need to make sure, among other things, that (a) the Iraqi records are well-kept, well-organized, and reliable, (b) the person doing the record search is competent and honest, (c) that the person doing the search is clear on what they are searching for, and (d) that the results of the search are reported correctly. Similarly with the actually-going-to-the-police-station approach, we'd need to make sure that the people doing the checking were careful and were honest. It would be good to have someone from an independent agency go with the AP reporter to Hussein's office to confirm what the AP people have attested to. And it would not be enough simply to go to the office; I would expect the reporters to talk to other people in the building to ascertain that Jamil Hussein does indeed work there and that is indeed his office.

That would seem to me to be one of the best ways of settling this. Until something like that is done, I'm hesitant to draw a firm conclusion either way. But in the meantime, the evidence we have at present leans more toward AP being correct than to the military being correct.

AP has made a number of specific checkable factual statements which they claim to know from direct personal knowledge. For the AP to be wrong, they need to be lying. But for the military to be wrong, Michael Dean simply needs to be mistaken. And that seems quite plausible to me. From reading his statement, I can see at least one clear error, and several questionable parts...

(continued)

 

[varwoche]

Witnesses gave nearly identical accounts

Two of the witnesses - a 45-year-old bookshop owner and a 48-year-old neighborhood grocery owner - gave nearly identical accounts of what happened. A third, a physician, said he saw the attack on the mosque from his home, saw it burning and heard people in the streets screaming that people had been set on fire. All three men are Sunni Muslims.

The two other witnesses said the mosque assault began in earnest about 2:30 p.m. after the arrival of the four vehicles filled with arms. They said the attackers fired into the mosque, then entered and set it on fire.

The witnesses said the six were doused with kerosene from a 1.3-gallon canister and set on fire at intervals, one after the other, with a torch made of rags.

 

[Nova Land]

In his statement Dean claimed "We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team." But this is clearly not definitive. No one in the US military has any personal knowledge of whether Jamil Hussein exists or not. No one from the US military has accompanied the AP reporter to meet with Jamil Hussein, for instance. No one from the US military went to the police station where Jamil Hussein apparently has an office to speak with the other police there and ask whether Jamil Hussein exists. All the military spokesperson knows is that he was told that a records search came up blank. So we know already that Dean is not a person who speaks accurately.

Dean also said that Jamil Hussein is "not a Baghdad police officer". If so, Hussein's repeated presence in an office in a Baghdad police station is curious and needs explaining. Is security at Baghdad police stations really so poor that a person can repeatedly commandeer office space there? I'm inclined to accept that Jamil Hussein's repeated presence in an office at the Baghdad police station, without his presence in the station or his occupancy of an office there being challenged by the other police officers in the station, indicates a fairly good probability he is a police officer there.

A lot of those deriding AP seem to be speculating that Hussein is not a police captain. If he's not, then AP would be wrong on an important detail of the story -- but we don't know either way yet. But it does seem very likely, from Hussein's repeated presence in the police station, and his ability to use an office there repeatedly without being challenged, that he is a police officer. And if that is the case, then Dean (and/or the MOI records) is wrong, because Dean said the records did not show a Jamil Hussein as a police officer. So in addition to the definite error in Dean's statement, there's also a probable error...

... Unless Dean is wording his statement very carefully. He said the records show Hussein is not an Iraqi police officer. But the real question is was he a police officer the past 2 years, during which he has been giving information to the AP? If he were fired by the Iraqi authorities when they learned he was the source of the story of the Sunnis being burned alive, then both Dean and the AP would be correct -- although Dean would be correct only in a literal sense.

Here's another possibility that comes to mind. Was Dean told that MOI has no record of Jamil Hussein? Or was he told that MOI does not have Jamil Hussein on their list of people authorized to speak to the press? Either Dean might have misunderstood what the MOI was saying -- or the MOI might have engaged in a slight bit of deception of their own, to avoid embarrassment -- or Dean might have chosen to slightly misrepresent what the search result actually meant.

We know from past experience that Bush administration officials often speak in such a way that one thinks they have said one thing but they actually said another. I wouldn't mind seeing Dean grilled a bit more closely on what is and isn't known about Jamil Hussein. Dean seems to do most of his communicating via letters, rather than speaking at a press conference at which he could be questioned -- so the possibility that there are questions he'd rather not be pressed on comes to mind. On the other hand, communicating in the way he has may be SOP. I'm not familiar enough with his job to know.

Basically, though, it comes down to this. I have no idea how good or bad the MOI record-keeping is, or how good or bad their clerical people are, but when one person checks a file drawer and says I can't find this person in the files, so he doesn't exist and other people check the police station and say Here he is, so he does exist, then in the absence of any further information the weight of the evidence indicates that the records are wrong and the witnesses are right. If the witnesses are wrong, then it should be possible to come up with evidence to show it. So far none has been presented.

If the situation were such that either the military officials were lying or the AP was lying, then it would be a different story. If, for instance, military officials were to say that they had accompanied AP reporters to the police station, having been promised a chance to meet with and confirm Jamil Hussein's existence, and that there had been no such person at the police station -- and the AP reporters were to maintain they had taken the military officials to meet Jamil and they had met with him -- then we would have clearly conflicting stories in which one party or the other must be lying. But that's not the case.

The US military has claimed they were not able to find evidence of Jamil's existence or of the burning incident -- but it is quite easy to fail to find evidence even when it exists, so no lie is necessary to account for such an error on their part. Dean's statement could easily be incorrect due to carelessness, evasiveness, misunderstanding or error. In contrast, AP has made much more specific claims. For AP to be wrong, something more than carelessness or deception is involved. Not only would the original reporter need to have been wrong (which could be sloppiness or deception) but the people who checked on his story and verified it would have to be lying.

If Jamil Hussein, whom several AP sources attest exists and has an office in the police station, does not exist, does not have an office in the police station, has not been talking to AP for the past 2 years, then the AP people are not simply being careless with the facts, the way Fox News often is. They are not simply spinning, the way press secretaries often do. They are flat-out lying.

And that's an unusual event -- as the examples which people such as firecoins have raised in this thread illustrate. (I'll go into that in my responses to those posts.)

 

[Nova Land]

Iraqi police and coalition sources are the ones that are saying AP's named source does not exist.

Really? I was under the impression that it is a US spokesperson (Michael Dean) who has said this, and that he says his source of information is an MOI check of their records. I have not seen any Iraqi police officers quoted as saying that Jamil Hussein does not exist.

Which is too bad, since that would be a good way of verifying the story: to ask various members of the Iraqi police force who work at the station the AP reporter went to whether they believe Jamil Hussein exists. Of course, by US policy -- as stated in Dean's letter -- it would be forbidden for such police officers to talk to reporters, and if they are caught doing so they are subject to firing. So that may be why I haven't seen these statements by Iraqi police which you refer to.

Which Iraqi police are you referring to? Please provide their names, and the text of (or links to) their statements so that I can read these too.

 

[Nova Land]

Reuters, AP, CBS News, CNN, ABC news, NBC news have all been caught with incorrect stories that should have never made print/the air and some were completely made up.

Yes. And the overwhelming majority of these cases were due to sloppiness and carelessness, which supports my point, that errors in reporting are generally due to sloppiness rather than deliberate deception.

... and some were completely made up.

Again, yes. There have been a few cases where a story was completely made up -- an invention on the part of the reporter, rather than a report of something they had observed or been told. These would be examples of deliberate lying rather than of sloppiness.

In the cases I am aware of, such as Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair, it was the result of a reporter deceiving their employer and getting away with it for a while. Once the veracity of what they'd written was questioned, however, the newspapers they were working for looked into their work and confirmed that their stories were inventions.

I am not aware of any case in which a reporter was accused of lying, and the reporters sent to verify whether the initial report was factual then also lied. Can you cite such a case? (Remember, I am asking for examples of lies -- i.e. deliberate fabrications -- not simply examples where you don't like or agree with the conclusions the reporter came to.)

If, for instance, when Janet Cooke was accused of making people up, if another reporter had been assigned to see if the people in her stories actually existed and that reporter had come back and claimed to have met the people she wrote about, that would be parallel to the situation being claimed with regard to AP. I'm not aware of any such case. Which supports my point that such a thing would be a remarkable -- an extraordinary -- occurrence.

 

[Nova Land]

NBC Dateline did a story in 1994ish I think where they tested GM SUVs safety and found out exploded on impact. Turns out Dateline rigged the vehicles used in their test. GM sued. The case was settled out of court.

Yes, I recall that incident. If you believe it will support your point, then by all means state your claim regarding that incident and present the details of it. (And no, linking to a right-wing blog is not the same as presenting the facts. If you find material at a right-wing blog that intrigues you, then by all means pursue the matter. But just as you would want AP to verify a story before broadcasting it, and you'd want them to have a source which actually knows what it is talking about, so you should do the same.)

As I recall the details, NBC reported on something which was a genuine problem. The GM truck gas tanks were more prone to explode on collision than tanks placed differently -- which is why GM lost a number of lawsuits. So NBC did not make up this claim; it's genuine. They were reporting on an actual case in which a GM truck explosion led to tragedy -- a case (one of many) in which GM was sued and had to pay significant damages.

Thing is, the explosions didn't occur every time there was a crash. There was an additional risk of explosions to GM trucks because of the gas tank placement -- that, I believe you will find when you check the details of the story, has been established -- but it was a very small additional risk. So what NBC did was stage a dramatization of the problem. That's a problem with television journalism -- it's a visual medium, so they like to have pictures to illustrate their story, and often no one is present with a camera for the thing they want to show.

I think what NBC did was deplorable. But, by the standards established in recent years, it was not a lie. NBC included a disclaimer that what they were showing was "unscientific" and not an actual test to see what would happen if there were a crash like they were about to show. Yes, they omitted mention of what exactly they had done which made this different from simply crashing one vehicle into another. But they did not claim to be doing a simple crash when they weren't. If the viewers didn't understand properly, and thought they were seeing an actual test of what would happen, rather than a dramatization, then that -- by modern standards -- is the fault of the viewers.

I disagree with that. I think NBC should have said clearly they were doing a dramatization, and that the kind of deceptive wording they used should be considered lying. But that is a topic for another thread. In this thread I am deferring to the stricter definition for lying which many people on this forum prefer to use.

AP has not attempted to weasel word their statements in this matter. It's possible Michael Dean has, but the AP statements are straightforward statements of facts. They claim their reporter met with Jamil Hussein repeatedly in his office in an Iraqi police station. If Jamil Hussein does not exist, or is not a police officer at that station, then the initial AP reporter was making false statements and the AP reporters who checked and verified the initial story are lying.

The equivalent in the NBC case would be if they had said during the broadcast that this was a genuine, unenhanced collision involving GM trucks -- and then, even after being accused of having rigged things to increase the chance of an explosion, had maintained they had not. But that's not what NBC did -- because that kind of lying is a rare occurrence.

That's why, in the absence of any evidence that AP is lying in that way, I am more inclined to believe the US military spokesperson is the one who is in error. Your example of the Dateline story illustrates how unusual the kind of behavior you are attributing to AP actually is.

But it's your example, so if you believe it will support your point then by all means look it up and present the facts here for us. What would be relevant is a statement by an NBC official, following the broadcast, which is a lie. Please present this statement, and a link to where it appears so that I can check it out for myself.