Saturday, November 25, 2006

Sourcing the News

Curt at Flopping Aces has done yeoman's work trying to track down the source of the story coming out of Baghdad that has been repeated in hundreds of other news reports about how six people were immolated by Iraqis seeking revenge for attacks on Thanksgiving Day that killed more than 200 people. The original source of the story is someone claiming to be Capt. Jamil Hussein. He's got a history of making similar claims that could not be substantiated by other reporters or the Iraqis or the US forces in the area of operations. Curious.

This comes on the heels of news out of Gaza that a Hamas cameraman was killed while filming the Hamas terrorist operations against Israeli forces. Hamas used his footage for its own propaganda materials, and it also sold it to Western media sources. Curious that the Western media hasn't bothered to track down the name of the Hamas operative who was providing this information.

And this comes on the heels of the summer terrorist media offensive that coincided with the Hizbullah war and rocket attacks from Gaza. The Western media outlets didn't have their own reporters and photographers, so relied on stringers - many of whom were nothing more than Hizbullah or Hamas or Fatah propagandists stage managing events. Hence, we got fauxtography, which is everywhere.

Every day we witness examples of the media providing an open microphone for terrorist flacks and appeasers, not to mention the terrorists themselves.

Only now do people have a way to check the news reports themselves and track down foreign sources to check the accuracy and sourcing of those reports.

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