Crittenden: The AP Has Lost Its Rudder
Sun, Dec 3, 2006 at 8:26:44 am PST
Jules Crittenden has a piece in the Boston Herald about the latest outrageous Associated Press scandal: Say no to AP’s shoddy work.
When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.
That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.
The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.
Curt at Floppingaces, www.floppingaces2.blogspot.com, led the charge. He thought there was something strange about an AP report, and took a second look at it, then a third look. He and others blew the lid off it. The AP is making up war crimes. But the resulting stink in the blogosphere has barely wrinkled a nose in the mainstream press. The ethics-obsessed Poynter Institute seems to be oblivious to it.
It has to do with the AP’s Iraqi stringers and an oft-quoted Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. Problem is, the Iraqi police say Capt. Hussein does not exist. The Iraqi police and U.S. military say an incident described in an AP report - Iraqi soldiers standing by as people were burned alive in a mosque - didn’t happen. Another AP-reported incident, U.S. soldiers shooting 11 civilians, also never happened, the military says.
When the AP was forced to acknowledge this situation, it did so in a story about a new Interior Ministry policy regarding false reports. The AP buried the fact that its own false report prompted this new policy. ...
The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.
UPDATE at 12/3/06 8:36:56 am:
Jules has more at his blog: Brave New World.
UPDATE at 12/3/06 8:50:53 am:
Please note that the Associated Press has yet to produce proof that “Iraqi police captain Jamil Hussain” actually exists; all we got from them was an arrogant statement that they are “satisfied with their reporting.”
Shouldn’t it be simple for them to produce “Captain Hussain,” and repair the damage to their reputation? They certainly had no problem getting in touch with him when he had stories of atrocities and US war crimes.



