Remember when I demonstrated the laziness and gullibility of some journalists by showing that a Procter & Gamble front group, posing as an independent research “foundation,” had repeatedly hoodwinked major news outlets into running bogus stories about a “new” “scientific” “study” showing that redheads are going extinct — and the reporters didn’t catch it, even though the “new” study had been described in virtually identical terms (presumably copied from press releases) by media reports in January 2007, November 2006, March 2006, May 2005, August 2004, March 2004 and November 2003?
Well, it seems the same thing can happen with more significant news stories, like bogus reports of decapitated bodies in Iraq. On three separate occasions now, major media outlets (specifically, the AP, Reuters and the New York Times) have credulously parroted thinly sourced reports of gruesome mass beheadings near Baghdad, only to learn that nothing of the sort occurred. It’s a blatant propaganda effort by extremists hoping to incite more sectarian violence, and the MSM is falling for it — hook, line and sinker. Repeatedly.
Reporting from a war zone is hard, as NBC’s Karl Bostic noted in his blog post about the second of the three “bogus bodies” incidents last year. No question about that. And there’s lots of gruesome violence in Iraq these days, so reports of mass beheadings aren’t inherently unbelievable. But neither of those realities make it excusable to pass off unconfirmed urban legends and/or insurgent propaganda as news, especially when the very same reporters would doubtless cringe at the thought of treating their own government’s official statements with anything other than a healthy dose of skepticism. As well they should — but healthy skepticism (not to be confused with cynicism, of course) should apply to all sources of information, not just the ones associated with the Bush Administration.
Independent confirmation: learn it, live it, love it.
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Categories: The Media & Blogs, Iraq, Iran & the Middle East
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July 2nd, 2007 at 2:24:25 am
But our news media DID blindly parrot official government statements about WMD in the runup to the war. That’s the problem. When any thinking person knew that WMD was just convenient pretext for invading Iraq.
July 2nd, 2007 at 3:28:48 am
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to the “MSM” on this. At least, not to Reuters and arguably not to the NYT. The Reuters story cites a statement from the Ministry of State for National Security. To be fair to you, Instapundit decided to cut out that citation with ellipses, but you can see it on Greyhawk. The NYT cites Interior Ministry officials.
Now, you call both of these cases “thinly sourced reports” and “unconfirmed urban legends and/or insurgent propaganda.” Why? These are coming from the Iraqi government (one even a statement). If your assertion is true that this is “a blatant propaganda effort by extremists,” then isn’t the real story here not “media is lazy and/or gullible and/or worse,” but rather “insurgents increasingly successful in using Iraqi government officials to spread propaganda”?
You say that the journalists would cringe at treating our government statements the same way, but is that really true with regards to on-the-ground incident/death reports? I believe I’ve seen numerous instances where the media cites a report/briefing from our government that X number of Iraqis/insurgents/troops died, and they cite it in the same matter as the Reuters or NYT articles (ie, “…a US military statement said.”). If you dispute this, I will try to look it up and see if my memory is correct.
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:51:11 am
While I can’t argue that a lot of reporters are lazy and clueless, the problem with MSM is that it has become a consumable like Coca-Cola and M&Ms. People aren’t tuning in for the war. They are tuning in for Paris Hilton’s three week stint in jail. The MSM is giving them what they want, Paris Hilton. When a real (or unreal) news item pops up in the Middle East, there often aren’t enough news resources there to do the story justice because foreign bureaus have been cut to shreds in recent years because American viewers, for the most part, don’t care.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:55:52 am
Clearly the lesson to be learned here is that you can’t trust the MSM for anything, be it the weather or the war. We should instead get 100% of our news from blogs, which, with their enormous budgets for foreign bureaus and complete lack of political bias, will eventually supplant the corporate media conglomerates.
Long live Drudge/Volokh/Reynolds.
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:42:54 am
Urban legends are not a new pheonom - case in point, the Mary Celeste. A brig which was surrounded with stories since it was discovered adrift without it’s crew in 1872. Stories have been published about it ever since. Even Arthur Conan Doyle fictionalized it, but published as if factual! Does the experssion, “Nothing new under the sun” apply?
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:43:11 pm
A story about mass graves and beheadings…linked via Drudge…
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:29:54 pm
Good catch, USC 1L+. There’s enough shame to go around here. Reuters prints a story without fact checking it first. And Glenn Reynolds truncates a quote to make what Reuters did seem worse than it actually was, and obscure the fact that the source of the bogus story was… the Iraqi government. Neither is much of a surprise for anyone familiar with wire services… or Glenn Reynolds.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:04:20 pm
Except the MSM prides itself on its fact-checking ability in contrast to bloggers. Shouldn’t the wire services be held to a higher standard than a law prof/blogger?
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:41:03 pm
Absolutely. I expect better (or at least, I wish I could expect better) from the news wires. I don’t expect better from Reynolds.
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:58:19 pm
I stopped expecting unbiased accuracy from the AP a long time ago …