Stating "I would not lie to you, trust me," is not the proof I need when somebody points out that it's very probable that I have been lied to.
Ignoring the issue and expecting it to go away may have been possible before the Internet and fact checking became so easy. Today, lies can be exposed more easily because there are millions of eyes and ears, and billions of links and incredible electronic data bases. and millions of people around the world have access to them.
Kathleen Carroll and her ilk at the AP are in the process of destroying their franchise.
For a slightly different view, here is Right Wing Nuthouse "Stringing Us along." (read the whole thing):
We have seen photos doctored, stories embellished or faked outright. Anyone remember the “chemical weapon attack” on Fallujah? We have seen civilian body counts inflated and stories of how they died swallowed whole by a press who would rather believe enemy propaganda than their own military; a press who suspends belief when given information that reflects poorly on the American military but insists on triple confirmations before they publish a retraction – if they ever bother.
And they don’t bother. The burning Sunnis were last week’s news, already forgotten in the rush of events. Bush and Maliki. The Iraq Study Group. Obama, Obama, Obama.
In their smug, self righteous little cocoons, the AP and others continue the process of making sausages out of the news. The burning Sunnis were just one mind-numbing atrocity in a Flanders Field of atrocities so who really, really cares down deep if we blew it? Just put up the old firewall of denial, do a cursory follow up by finding some “eyewitnesses” (who probably read about the burning Sunnis in the paper or saw the report on TV), neglect to mention our little police captain problem and that’ll do it. End of story.
AP can do this because ultimately, we are not their clients. Unlike newspapers or TV networks, the AP could give a hoot about the people who actually end up reading their enemy propaganda. The people who pay them are, of course, the newspapers and TV stations that subscribe to their service.
[snip]
This story is revealing of many things, not the least of which is that our free press is in trouble. Partly from infringements by government but also by lousy stewardship of this precious right being carried out by many the current practitioners of the craft. Not all, of course. There are still some excellent journalists writing for the top publications. But by and large, those whose responsibility it is to inform us, to keep us abreast of what’s going on in the world, are failing and failing badly.
And the hell of it is, no one seems to want to fix the problems much less address them.
And here is added information from Sharon Tosi Moore, an officer in the United States Army Reserves, currently serving in Iraq.
A winning situation all around.
Except, well, except for the tiny little detail that the incident most likely never happened. A week has gone by and no charred bodies were produced. No dramatic funeral parades, with all the attendant wailing and gnashing of teeth, occurred. Not one photo. No grand reprisals. Not even any speeches (and it is hard to imagine Iraqi religious leaders miss an opportunity to make speeches). Just a few remarks from the Iraqi government, largely ignored by the U.S. press, that all reports showed that that particular district had been quiet, and pleading the Iraqi people for calm.
No one thought to question this unusual divergence from normal protocol.
The gullible press swallowed the initial claims whole. Of the major news sources, only TIME Magazine used the word "reportedly" in their headline. Besides, there are always new and dramatic stories of gore and bloodshed in Iraq and no one has the time to check their sources carefully or to go back and correct erroneous reports.
A review of the databases that painstakingly record every single incident in Iraq shows no evidence or report of the event. It is hard to believe that something as momentous as this would have escaped the notice of both the U.S. military and the entire Iraqi government. And yet not one major news organization has recanted their article. The story has been allowed to stand, and as such has become a truth. It is now just one more legend that will be confidently repeated as truth in future histories of the conflict.
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