AP's Mainscream Media Bias

[Grimmy]

http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/...ream_medi.html

March 27, 2006
AP's Mainscream Media Bias
Media Madness
Hatched by Dafydd

Although this AP story is ostensibly about Iraq, we didn't bother using the "Iraq Matters" category tag because -- well, because the real story here is the creative use of the media megaphone to create the news, rather than merely report it (that's so dull!)
What AP Knows That Ain't So

Let's start with the headline:
Wave of Violence Kills at Least 69 Iraqis

"Uh oh," thinks the reader, "did the terrorists blow up another mosque?" A quick read of the first paragraph, however, makes it clear that AP is lumping together terrorist or vigilante murders and American and Iraqi Army killing of enemy combatants:

Police found 30 more victims of the sectarian slaughter ravaging Iraq - most of them beheaded - dumped on a village road north of Baghdad on Sunday. At least 16 other Iraqis were killed in a U.S.-backed raid in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital.

Strike one.

The next two paragraphs subtlely use a hoary, old propaganda technique. Can you spot it?

Accounts of the raid varied. Aides to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi police both said it took place at a mosque, with police claiming 22 bystanders died and al-Sadr's aides saying 18 innocent men were killed.

The Americans said Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. troops killed 16 "insurgents" in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops.

What is wrong with this picture? Take a second look at the second paragraph:
The Americans said Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. troops killed 16 "insurgents" in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops.

You noticed that too, eh? The Associated Press felt no qualms about allowing various Iraqis of dubious provenance to accuse American soldiers of brutally murdering 22 bystanders and 18 innocent men (a later graf makes it clear that is what Sadr's supporters allege we did); and AP didn't put scare quotes around those two descriptors. But they felt an overpowering urge to put little, curly doubt-indicators around the American military's description of those same dead guys as "insurgents."

Strike two....

Finally, they say both in the headline and in the body of the story that there were "at least 69 people" slain:

A total of at least 69 people were reported killed Sunday in one of the bloodiest days in weeks. Most of the dead appeared to be victims the shadowy Sunni-Shiite score-settling that has torn at the fabric of Iraq since Feb. 22 when a Shiite shrine was blown apart in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

But when you add up the incidents described in the story, you only get 46.

They sneak in another twelve in this graphic, "11 handcuffed and shot bodies" in Baquba and a Basra teenager "killed by a bomb while walking to school."

But that still only brings the total up to 58. Who were the missing eleven corpses?

I assume there really were 69; but without knowing anything at all about them, we have no clue what to think about their deaths. Were they like the 30 people beheaded? Or were they more like the sixteen enemy combatants the Iraqi Special Forces killed in Baqouba? AP doesn't see fit to tell us.

Strike three; yer outa there!

But it's not just a few mistakes and contradictions here and there in the AP story; there is a pattern of obfuscation that is quite disturbing.
What AP Doesn't Know That It Doesn't Know

Looking at the same story over on Reuters, much that was opaque in the AP story becomes clearer.

AP writes:

Accounts of the raid varied. Aides to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi police both said it took place at a mosque, with police claiming 22 bystanders died and al-Sadr's aides saying 18 innocent men were killed.

They never name the mosque, nor do they discuss its affilliation. But Reuters had no trouble ferreting out this information. They also managed to find eyewitness accounts other than those of the supposed victims:

Residents in the Shaab district of northeastern Baghdad said they saw and heard heavy clashes between U.S. troops and gunmen they believed were from the Mehdi Army, close to the Sadr-linked Mustafa mosque. U.S. helicopters were overhead they said.

Police sources said they understood that U.S. troops had raided an area around the mosque and got into a gun battle with the Mehdi Army that left about 20 militiamen dead.

Sadr aides said troops killed unarmed people: "The American forces went into Mustafa mosque at prayers and killed more than 20 worshippers," Araji said. "They tied them up and shot them."

Does it make a difference whether the Mustafa mosque was "[Muqtada] Sadr-linked?" Of course it does; Sadr's militia, al-Mahdi, stands accused not only of carrying out a wave of killings against Sunni Iraqis in Baghdad and in the South, but of acting on the orders of Iran. And Transitional Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari himself owes his current candidacy for permanent prime minister to Muqtada Sadr as well.

This completely changes how readers will view the reported fact that Jaafari was very angry about this raid. Jaafari and the mosque are both connected to Sadr; so it's hardly surprising that Jaafari is livid.

Sadr has been fighting American forces ever since he led an uprising in Spring of 2004, timed to coincide with al-Qaeda's assault upon Coalition forces in Fallujah. Knowing all that clearly makes it more likely that the Sadrites at Mustafa mosque really did open fire... making the subsequent raid by the Iraqi Army much more understandable, and the American version of events considerably more plausible.

But AP doesn't think think you need to know that.

By the way, in case you're wondering whether any Americans were killed or wounded in the fireright -- AP either couldn't be bothered to find out or does not care to tell you. The New York Times had no difficulty reading the statement released by the Pentagon:

The release also said no American soldiers had been hurt in the raid, and one prisoner being held by the gunman had been freed.

How exactly did it all start? Could this shed some light on what actually happened? Here is AP's account of the raid:

The Americans said Iraqi special forces backed by U.S. troops killed 16 "insurgents" in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops....

[Shiite legislator and party spokesman Khudayer] Al-Khuzai claimed that after coming under attack, U.S. forces raided the party office, "tortured" the men, dragged them out and "executed" them. He said it was not clear who attacked the U.S. troops.

This account makes it sound like we just stumbled into the raid by accident, blundering about because we had no idea who had shot at us.

The Times has a different story:

On Sunday night, American and Iraqi Army forces surrounded a mosque in northeast Baghdad used by Mr. Sadr's troops as a headquarters, Iraqi officials said. Helicopters buzzed overhead as a fleet of heavily armed Humvees sealed off the exits, witnesses said, and when [Iraqi Army] soldiers tried to enter the mosque, shooting erupted, and a heavy-caliber gun battle raged for the next hour.

This version makes it tremendously less likely that we went after the wrong target... particularly when the men inside the mosque began shooting first.

In point after point, the Associated Press version is incomplete, riddled with contradictions, and aggressively anti-American (and by extension, anti-Iraq Army) when compared to either the Reuters or the New York Times version. Either this is by intent, by accident, or some mixture of the two.
Why It Matters Whether AP Knows Anything At All

When the Antique Media play games with the news for political purposes, they think they're being subtle and clever. In fact, they're being obvious and boorish, and that is actual malice. When they rush to press without bothering to discover critical pieces of information, they're dangerously incompetent; that's reckless disregard for the truth.

Virtually every problem facing America today is either caused or at least exacerbated by the madness of the mainstream media:

* Everybody knows the economy is in a shambles (despite strong GDP growth, low interest rates, strong job growth, and record home ownership) because that's what they see in the media.

* Everyone knows that the Democrats are going to sweep into control of the House and Senate because that's what the media keep saying.

* Everyone knows that Bush "lied about WMD" and "lied about Saddam being behind 9/11" because the media talking heads look straight in the camera and say so.

* And of course, everyone knows that Iraq is in a civil war, is spiraliing out of control, and is a catastrophic defeat for America because -- heck, do we ever hear anything else from the exempt media?

It's time for the American people to really come to grips with the terrible information crisis we have: our major source of understanding virtually everything is an industry that no longer cares about getting it right -- if they ever did.