Topic: NewsBusters
A Dec. 4 NewsBusters post by Al Brown not only fails to give the Associated Press' side of the story in asserting that the AP's reporting from Iraq is "discredited" -- as is his habit -- he goes on to insist that a New York Times article on the controversy doesn't ask "the most troubling question of all: whether or not al Qaeda propagandists are using the Western media to foment civil war in Iraq." (Italics his.)
Of course, nowhere does Brown offer any evidence that the AP is, in fact, using "al Qaeda propagandists" in its reporting. He also doesn't ask why the U.S. military or the Iraqi government is inherently more trustworthy as a source of "authorized" information about goings-on in Iraq. In fact, Brown goes on to laud the efforts of the Iraq Interior Ministry in discrediting any source it doesn't approve of as not offering "real, true news," claiming that it has a "legitimate interest in seeing that rumors and disinformation propagated by their enemies are not being published as 'news.' "
All of Brown's fulminations that the AP is reporting "rumors and disinformation" ignores the fact that the AP found witnesses to the burning of six Sunnis and is standing by one source for that story, Jamil Hussein. Why is it so difficult for Brown to admit that little fact? Perhaps because by ignoring something that less than black-and-white, he's able to throw words like "discredited" around, even though no such determination has been made by anyone without a partisan (conservative bloggers) or personal (CENTCOM and the Iraq Interior Ministry) stake in the story.
Is it too much to ask for Brown to admit the full truth about the AP? Apparently so.
