Beleaguered Institution Won't Acknowledge Mistakes

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No, I don't mean the Bush Administration, whose unwillingness to apologize for itself drives mainstream media into perpetual indignation.

Michelle Malkin got a response from a reporter--not the Washington Post's--after she asked about issuing some kind of correction following reports about war atrocity claims by Jimmy Massey, which have since been debunked by St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Ron Harris. The reply, from USA Today's Rick Hampson, is a depressing example of indifference to the truth. Malkin quotes him:

I personally have no plans for a follow up. Our story was not so much about the veracity of Massey's claims -- few if any of those mentioned in the Post-Dispatch piece were in our story -- as the reaction in a small, patriotic town to its former Marine recruiter coming back as a war protester. (We also went into Massey's psychological history.) Certainly, he had a lot of critics/opponents/skeptics in town even back then. So I don't expect we'll revisit the subject.

With that kind of attitude, I don't expect so either.

Even on Hampson's own evasive terms, the story demands a follow-up. How does a small, patriotic town react to the news that its former Marine recruiter fabricated tales about atrocities? Plenty of readers would be interested in that, even if it simultaneously uncovers how a major American newspaper was duped in a hoax. Oh...

I sincerely hope that the Washington Post's Doug Struck doesn't respond the same way. Also I hope he responds. Here's what he wrote on Dec. 8, 2004:

A former U.S. Marine staff sergeant testified at a hearing Tuesday that his unit killed at least 30 unarmed civilians in Iraq during the war in 2003 and that Marines routinely shot and killed wounded Iraqis.

Jimmy J. Massey, a 12-year veteran, said he left Iraq in May 2003 after a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress. He said he and his men shot and killed four Iraqis staging a demonstration and a man with his hands up trying to surrender, as well as women and children at roadblocks. Massey said he had complained to his superiors about the "killing of innocent civilians," but that nothing was done....

Struck quotes the Marines denying the allegations, but that doesn't have the same weight as the Post-Dispatch's Harris, who writes:

News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.

He wasn't.

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

Cross-posted at PostWatch