Regarding the AP Story

In looking at the revised AP story on the six Sunnis allegedly burned, a couple questions.

It says:

One witness said he and other people from the neighborhood took the six immolation victims to the Sunni cemetery near Baghdad's Abu Ghraib suburb and buried them after the gunbattle. That witness said one of the victims was the Mustafa mosque muezzin or prayer caller, Ahmed al-Mashadani. He did not know the names of the five others, but said they were all members of the al-Mashadani tribe.

Would that be the same Sunni, Ahmed al-Mashadani who was, according to sources, kidnapped sometime in August? It's a Spanish language story. I'll include the translated graph and the one above.

To these deaths it is possible to add the kidnapping of a brother of the president of the Iraqian Parliament, the suní Mahmud al Mashadani, by a group of men armed in Bagdad, informed sources into the ministry into Interior.

According to the sources, Amhed al-Mashadani was kidnapped yesterday at night while he lead by the district of chií majority of Hurriya, in the northwest of the capital.

The AP states the attack began:

BAGHDAD — The attack on the small Mustafa Sunni mosque began as worshippers were finishing Friday midday prayers.

And includes two times:

Those who would talk said the assault began about 2:15 p.m ... The two other witnesses said the mosque assault began in earnest about 2:30 p.m.

Certainly I could be wrong. But from this site, it seems the midday prayer time in Iraq would be about 11:15 AM with the Asr, or afternoon prayer time beginning at 2:36 PM. If those times are correct, neither of the times alleged would put the attack at the end of midday prayer.

The AP says:

The witnesses refused to allow the use of their names because they feared retribution

Then went on to add:

Two of the witnesses — a 45-year-old bookshop owner and a 48-year-old neighborhood grocery owner

If the new alleged version of the story is correct, did the AP just burn two sources by providing details to bolster their own credibility at the cost of putting their sources lives at risks? How many 45 and 48 year old respective book and grocery store owners are to be found in this one neighborhood, after all?

The AP says:

AP Television News also took video of the Mustafa mosque showing a large portion of the front wall around the door blown away. The interior of the mosque appeared to be badly damaged and there were signs of fire.

Could that be because the mosque has been attacked before? And there was a significant fire?

More than a hundred Sunni Muslim men have answered the call to prayer and come to the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood. The atmosphere is tense, just a few days after someone attacked the mosque with explosives and a rocket-propelled grenade. Local clerics and the U-S military fear the incident could spark more violence.

The AP says:

The Associated Press first reported on Friday's incident that evening, based on the account of police Capt. Jamil Hussein and Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, who told Al-Arabiya television he saw people who were soaked in kerosene, then set afire, burning before his eyes.

Is that the same Imad al-Hashini who infamous quote of Nov 3 was:

"This is America spitting in our face," said Imad al-Hashimi, a Baghdad paediatrician. "The sheer arrogance of it is unbelievable."

And if it was him, as a doctor, could, or did he do anything to help any of the alleged victims?

And lastly, was there ever any clarification to the earlier story of the attack at the mosque? It appears to be the home to extremists some allege caused the previous damage themselves while manufacturing car bombs?

At the cement-rendered Ahbab Al-Mustafa mosque, the imam, Ahmed Al-Dabash, with the trademark straggly beard associated with pro-Sunni extremism, blamed Tuesday's bombing on Shiite militias and denied that a day later his congregation had attacked the Shiites' Al Tuheed mosque.

Amjad Jazim Mohammed, a member of the Shiite congregation, said that he and fellow worshippers went to help the dead and injured Sunnis, but that the explosion was not a Shiite attack - rather an accidental detonation as the Sunnis prepared car-bombs for use against local Shiites.

Just curious, is all.

Comments

[salvage]

Certainly I could be wrong.

Yes.

[-asx-]

I take it you think the AP just made the whole thing up?

Do you really think the AP is pro-Islamist?

[Buzzy]

Wouldn't be the first time AP (and Reuters for that matter) have published false information based only on it's pro terrorist / anti American slant with absolutely no fact checking involved at all. So much of the news these "businesses" provided from the Israel / Lebanon war were faked but reported as real. Even real MSM reporters (not Hezbollah paid stringers) admitted that if they didn't report just exactly what Hezbollah wanted reported they wouldn't have access and their lives might be in danger. Why doesn't the MSM report the fact that over 80% of towns in Iraq aren't experiencing any violence and that the Kurdish 1/3 of the country is peaceful and thriving? Why doesn't the MSM report that the great majority of Iraqis greet the Americans and British as liberators and deeply fear the day we leave? It doesn't fit the anti war, anti American, pro terrorist agenda that they subscribe to.

[chris]

what i find interesting is that the apparently the ap interviewed the only people in Iraq that don't use the metric system... as near as i can tell, Iraq adopted the metric system somewhere near 1930... so again why would two store owners (who probably use metric amounts daily in their businesses) identify a container in its non-metric amount... unless of course, the ap thinks that the average reader wouldn't know what a 5L container was.....

something stinks here

[ajacksonian]

From what I have seen previously from the overall Media scene is that there is no longer any attempt by the Media to differentiate between: stories, news, anlaysis, and the little things known as *facts*. News 'stories' may or may not contain 'facts', and often DO contain much that is supposition or conjecture without properly labeling it as such. Further, reports now feel free to 'analyze' an 'event' on the spot, without establishing their foundational credibility to do so. Anthing in the way of 'facts' that are put forth during such reporting is then biased by not only the reporter, but also in the lack of tagging who said what and when and then letting the reader or watcher know that the things being said by these individuals are just that and not a larger scale view as that is not available to the reporter at that time.

Standing back and doing actual 'analysis' of 'events' and examining the 'facts' behind them is rarely done and commonly held 'assertions' are then put forward as being either 'facts' or renditions of 'events' without examining who has done such asserting and WHY. This is a cross-media fault that started when getting the 'story' became more important than getting the 'facts' or 'reporting the news'. Facts are part of a larger story that precede and go forward from any given event: they are a part of a chain that cannot be adequately broken down without analyzing what singular facts mean in a chain of 'events'. When such factual information is not made available and only highly subjective views of those 'facts' is given, the actual facts themselves, become attached with the viewpoint of those asserting them.

This is why the necessity of finding multiple viewers of 'events' and giving their renditions of them as they saw them without trying to make a 'story' of them is important: it allows the multi-part biases of the individuals doing the viewing to give a comprehensible overview of what actually happened. By getting multiple biases on singular happenings the actual, factual content starts to become apparent shorn of individual assertions of what they think it means.

This is something known as 'fact based news reporting'. The reporter does not insert their view nor viewpoint into an event, a series of facts or any other thing. It separates the 'event' so that it may be placed in larger context once it is understood. The facts, themselves, cause a confluence of how they came to happen to also come to light, shorn of the subjective biases of multiple individuals. When those are not made apparent and when sole-source reporting is done, then the subjective is more highly placed than the objective. The objective is to report the 'news' that is fact-based and seen from the multiple biases of those that have witnessed it.

Without that we then have reporters who are unable to understand the actual basis of their reporting. When I see articles in the Washington Post that come to conclusions on Federal Budgetary figures and expenditures that are directly contrary to what they report them to be, I know that there is a deep, underlying problem from the reporting staff to the editorial staff. The actual facts, themselves, in the context of the Federal Budgetary cycle say one thing and clearly, but the reporting is trying to say something so wholly at odds with that as to be outside the realm of the 'possible'. It is not even a 'probability' that what they are stating has actual basis as the budgetary numbers, the cold hard facts, cannot be interpreted in that way.

I have seen this in multiple arenas with multiple news organizations: Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, AP, and the entire three letter video imagery reporting system known as 'television news'.

I vituperate on it further here: http://ajacksonian.blogspot.com/2006/08/separating-stories-news-analysis-and.html

[ZZMike]

Do a Google search for Jamil Hussein - identified as a "police captain" in the news reports. He is not a police captain - in fact, the Iraqi police have never heard of him. Also check the blogs for that name.

About the metric thing: the shopkeeper may have reported it in liters, but the reporters, afraid that the great unwashed masses of the American public might not understand such difficult concepts, converted into English units. In news stories, only drugs like cocaine and marijuana are reported in kilos.

[Caratacus]

I find it odd that a "police captain" in Yarmouk, a Sunni district in Baghdad, and Imad al-Hashimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriyah, describe events in Hurriyah which is a Shiite district controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr. Just what is al Hashimi a Sunni elder doing running around in a Shiite district? Methinks something is not quite right here.

[Lord Nazh]

zzmike, in almost every story I read from the AP or any MSM when a unit of measure is reported in metric, it is written in metric, even to us unwashed masses. Usually the unit is M(e) so we don't get to confused :) Even money is usually reported in the native from with dollar conversion. So if the AP reported a non-litre amount, then the 'witness' described a non-litre amount.

Nine times out of nine a person will use the unit of measure they are most comfortable with (and use the most) no matter what the context.

[laelaps]

From what I understand, the American journalists personally fact-check virtually nothing. They hunker down in the Green Zone, understandably afraid to venture out, especially into known hot areas. They rely on their native stringers for everything. If they didn't, they would file no stories at all.

[Mikey]

God I love the blogs, otherwise we wouldn't even have a shot at holding MSM accountable. A potential walk-back on the timing of prayers, however. I queried the same site you did, went to All Countries, zoomed on Karbala, and got this:

Date Fajr Sunrise Dhur Asr Maghrib Isha
December 12, 2006 5:39 7:02 12:08 2:51 5:15 6:32
December 13, 2006 5:40 7:02 12:09 2:51 5:15 6:32

Granted, it ain't Nov. 24th, and it ain't Baghdad, but (assuming Dhur = midday prayers) I would concede the times given could be considered reasonable for "finishing Friday midday prayers". A minor, anal-retentive point, but you can bet AP would use this as a major 'gotcha' were blogs to get prayer times wrong. It wouldn't actually be major, of course, but that's never stopped 'em before.