The Coffeespy

U.S. officials and the Associated Press are at odds over an AP story concerning the burning of six Sunni men in Baghdad.  Bloggers have joined in the fray and claim to have debunked the story as untrue.

Michelle Malkin writes in her New York Post piece:

Just a few small problems with the massively publicized story:

*“Police Capt. Jamil Hussein” is an unreliable source whom the military has warned the Associated Press about before.

*The incident can’t be verified.

The U.S. spokesperson, Navy Lt. Michael Dean, said of the incident:

That the story of the burnings “is another rumor; we dispatched our forces to the area where the rumor claimed the burning took place and found nothing. We also sent a team to al-Dab Aladly (medical center), and I was in touch with this center. No one can confirm any burned, dead body was received. (The Ministry of Defense) also has no information about this incident, either.

We have some of the respected news outlets that deal with news fast and have a relation with many TV channels and the media in general, who distributed a story quoting a person called Jamil Hussein. Afterward, we searched our sources in our staff for anyone by this name — maybe he wore an MOI uniform and gave a different name to the reporter for money.

CENTCOM has requested retraction of the story by AP.  AP responded:

We are satisfied with our reporting on this incident. If Iraqi and U.S. military spokesmen choose to disregard AP’s on-the-ground reporting, that is certainly their choice to make, but it is a puzzling one given the facts.

AP journalists have repeatedly been to the Hurriyah neighborhood, a small Sunni enclave within a larger Shiia area of Baghdad. Residents there have told us in detail about the attack on the mosque and that six people were burned alive during it. … We have also spoken repeatedly to a police captain who is known to AP and has been a reliable source of accurate information in the past and he has confirmed the attack.

By contrast, the U.S. military and Iraqi government spokesmen attack our reporting because that captain’s name is not on their list of authorized spokespeople. Their implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information. Period. …

At the end of the day, we have AP journalists with reporting and images from the actual neighborhood versus official spokesmen saying the story cannot be true because it is damaging and because one of the sources is not on a list of people approved to talk to the press. Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.

We stand behind our reporting.

Problem is, the only named source lied about his employment.  While the U.S. actually conducted an investigation into the incident, the AP just tries to make it look like the U.S. public affairs officer is complaining about government approved sources.  This ignores the fact that the U.S. public affairs officer checked the source’s credentials with the police agency he claimed to work for only to find he was lying.

No reliable sources + no other evidence + fruitless official investigation = nothing to report.

AP says it has images but they haven’t appeared.  They say there are additional sources, but they aren’t named.  While the incident may have occurred, there’s no evidence to date to support the story as written.  That, AP, is not disputable.

UPDATE

Gateway Pundit reports Iraqi government might take action against the AP.