Media Mendacity Undermines Iraq Efforts

The media continues to carry water for the insurgents, terrorists, and extremists who seek to deny Iraq a stable and secure environment. When they cannot produce actual carnage, the terrorists resort to planting rumors that get picked up as fact by Reuters and other wire services.

Instead of fact checking, they take these reports as a given, and the reports are sent around the world in the blink of an eye.

The original stories claimed that 20+ bodies were found decapitated near Baghdad. Plenty of details were given, but oddly no photos of the scene. The story was repeated by AP, Reuters, and picked up by newspapers around the world.

The problem? None of this was true. MNF-I PAO strongly denounced the reporting:

Extremists using false media reporting to incite sectarian violence

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Friday, news media reported a mass killing in a village near Salman Pak where 20 men were allegedly found beheaded. It now appears that the story was completely false and fabricated by unknown sources.

Upon learning of the press reports, coalition and Iraqi officials began investigating to determine if the reports were true. Ultimately it was concluded the reports were false.

Anti-Iraqi Forces are known for purposely providing false information to the media to incite violence and revenge killings, and they may well have been the source of this misinformation.

“Extremists promote falsehoods of mass killings, collateral damage and other violence specifically to turn Iraqis against other Iraqis,” said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, spokesperson for MNF-I. “Unfortunately, lies are much easier to state, the truth often takes time to prove,” said Fox.

Not all media reports can be immediately substantiated by Government of Iraq or Coalition Forces. They must go through a process to verify such claims, to include checking with various Iraqi Ministry’s, local police and security forces. Meanwhile, extremists have achieved their goal of spreading false information aimed at intimidating civilians and destabilizing Iraqi security.

Ultimately, media reporting based on verifiable sources will reduce the possibility of misinformation unnecessarily alarming citizens.

The media has repeatedly chosen to accept rumor and innuendo over facts and verifiable stories, especially when such stories show the US in a poor light or that the Iraq campaign has gone poorly.

Perhaps more damning is the AFP report noting the MNF-I report:

The US military accused the international media on Saturday of exacerbating Iraq's violent tensions by reporting false claims of massacres which it said were deliberately fabricated by extremist groups.

This week several newspapers and agencies reported that Iraqi police had found 20 beheaded corpses in Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad.

AFP did not carry the report after its sources were unable to confirm the rumour.

AFP refused to run the story because it could not confirm the rumor. Yet, the other wire services had no problem running unsubstantiated rumors as fact. This is the same media that had everyone running in circles trying to prove Jamil Hussein existed.

Ace calls it Decapigate.