This piece by Tom Zeller at the New York Times about the nonexistent Iraqi police captain and his imaginary war crimes is a little more fair than I expected. He actually seems to realize there may be a problem at the Associated Press, although he does get in the obligatory dark hints that bloggers are driven by some kind of agenda (the Lincoln Group? are they serious?): Separating Hyperbole From Horror in Iraq.

Imagine, if you will, the suffocating arrogance level at this AP damage control meeting reported by Zeller:

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.

These people really do seem to think they’re a priestly class, immune to criticism, existing on some rarefied plane from which they hand down truth to the ungrateful masses.

A quote from Frank Zappa is appropriate: “Your whole attitude stinks, I say, and the life you lead is completely empty.”

But isn’t it interesting that Zeller inexplicably forgets to mention in his article what he reported in the Times “blog” on December 1—that the NYT’s own Iraqi correspondent was unable to corroborate the AP’s reports? (Hat tip: Allahpundit.)

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

UPDATE at 12/4/06 9:22:57 am:

Curt at Flopping Aces, who blew the whistle and got the blog rabble all upset: Responding To The New York Times.

UPDATE at 12/4/06 10:09:20 am:

The Boston Herald’s Jules Crittenden on Fox News: Video: Fox News covers Jamilgate.