Curt at Flopping Aces notes that the Associated Press has quietly changed the copy of their November 28 response to questions about the "burning six" story. And the Google cached version apparently has been changed, as well.
The AP angrily rejected criticism of its story about six Sunni men being dragged from prayer and burned alive after CENTCOM, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and bloggers questioned the identity of "police captain Jamil Hussein," their chief source for the story. CENTCOM and the MOI say that no such person is listed as a police captain. Hussein had previously been quoted by the AP in more than sixty stories over the past two years.
After Confederate Yankee noticed that the page briefly went down, an unacknowledged paragraph rewrite appeared:
AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and later corroborated it with police.
USA Today still has the original copy posted:
AP reporters who have been working in Iraq throughout the conflict learned of the mosque incident through witnesses and neighborhood residents and corroborated it with a named police spokesmen and also through hospital and morgue workers.
The "neighbors" and "hospital and morgue workers" copy has been expunged.
Why would the Associated Press try to change the record on a controversial story, especially one in which the AP's sourcing has come into question?
Update: Allahpundit at HotAir thinks that the quotes are from two different documents, but wonders why the supporting witnesses were left out of the later document. I'm not convinced that there were two documents. The copy is just too similar.
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Quoted in more than 60 storie
December 19, 2006 - 16:23 ET by taznarQuoted in more than 60 stories in two years. The AP has had contact with him on such a regular basis and now, suddenly, he can't be found. That alone says a lot.
After observing all the fla
December 19, 2006 - 17:09 ET by Right2thePointAfter observing all the flack over Green Helment and Reuters Fauxtography, you would think someone in large press organizations would tighten their source review vetting and have periodic reviews of frequently used source reliability.
So far it looks like AP is stonewalling. But in retrospect how are the bloggers going to force action. It's gonna have to take a call from someone with a lot more juice.
Right now the biggest thing is to worry that AP is gonna do a dirty trick entrapment story to pull a gotcha on bloggers to take down their credibility.
Prudent lookups and crosschecks should be used in future questionable stories before calling the AP out to avoid that risk with an early jump.
Crow tetrazini for the AP.
December 19, 2006 - 18:04 ET by sarcasmoCrow tetrazini for the AP. Why can't they just admit they were wrong & retract it to save what's left of their reputation?? Weird...
JMR
Google cached page has change
December 19, 2006 - 21:13 ET by NazarethGoogle cached page has changed too? How did that happen? Google colluding with the AP? Or can someone outside google change cached pages?
http://sacredscoop.com
Google cache is just a copy o
December 19, 2006 - 22:52 ET by polliwogGoogle cache is just a copy of the page. If the page changes, the Google-cached page will change too (though it make take a while for Google to get around to checking, so for some time the cache may have an older page).
They probably changed the s
December 20, 2006 - 03:47 ET by polliwogThey probably changed the story because it was based on a source that was now called into question, but they probably believed that their remaining sources were still solid. If they believed that they now had insufficient sources, they would (or should) retract the story.
In the days of newspapers, it was impractical to accurately cite all your sources, because the page wasn't big enough. In the age of the internet, we should begin expecting a higher standard of evidence. There's room on the internet to cite all your sources. If we'd seen Jamil Hussein cited as a source for all these supposed 60 stories, we'd have at least had the opportunity to wonder who he is (or isn't), and whether to trust the reports.