Editor & Publisher
Thursday, November 30, 2006

NEW YORK The U.S. military and Iraqi officials continue to question a source for a widely publicized Associated Press story about six Iraqis being set on fire last Friday -- and AP continues to stand by it, with new developments today.

The latest: A spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior at a press conference today claimed that a key source in the original AP report was not a Baghdad police officer, as AP had declared. He also denounced press accounts based on alleged rumors. Hours later, Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The Associated Press, responded in a statement sent to E&P, stating, "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."

The AP had reported last Saturday that a police captain named Jamil Hussein was one of two sources for its original story. The U.S. military in a letter to the AP, along with conservative bloggers such as Michelle Malkin, heatedly charged that Hussein was fictional or in any case was not a police officer, throwing the AP account into doubt.

But AP denied this and, in any case, went back and found several more witnesses to the immolations, and issued a new report on the six deaths Tuesday -- while labeling the charges against it as "ludicrous."

Today brought the Baghdad press conference and the Iraqi official, Brig. Gen. Abdu-Karim Khalaf, charging that Capt. Hussein was not a Baghdad police officer -- and denounding media reports based on unconfirmed sources and what he said were mere rumors. Carroll then responded with her statement.

After stating that AP was "satisfied" with its reporting, she continued: "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. Images taken later that day and again this week show a burned mosque and graffiti that says 'blood wanted,' similar to that found on the homes of Iraqis driven out of neighborhoods where they are a minority. 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.

"Further, the Iraqi spokesman said today that reporting on the such atrocities 'shows that the security situation is worse than it really is.' He is speaking from a capital city where dozens of bodies are discovered every day showing signs of terrible torture. Where people are gunned down in their cars, dragged from their homes or blown apart in public places every single day.

"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."

Hussein has been used as a source in several other AP stories earlier this year.

Yesterday, USA Today's "On Deadlien" blog had asked AP spokeswoman Linda Wagner to comment on the military standing by its original claims, and she responded via e-mail: "AP has reported this attack thoroughly and diligently, speaking to police, witnesses and others who would know about the attack. We sent reporters to the area later and found additional eyewitnesses whose stories were consistent."