Patterico's Pontifications

2/1/2007

Accepted Wisdom™ on Jamil Hussein

Filed under: General,Media Bias,Movies — Patterico @ 5:23 pm



(Accepted Wisdom™ is a semi-regular feature of this site, highlighting contradictory viewpoints held by the elite.)

It is Accepted Wisdom™ that:

Everybody knows that the real name of the AP‘s source for the Burning Six story is Jamil Hussein. Therefore, conservative bloggers who speculated to the contrary are idiots.

And at the same time:

Everybody knows that the real name of the AP‘s source for the Burning Six story is not Jamil Hussein. Therefore, conservative bloggers who talk about revealing his true name are evil and soulless.

Technically, in this case, the “elite” consists of the AP, Editor & Publisher, and some lefty moronblogs written by stoners who look like Shaggy’s less literate, more drug-addled cousin. I.e., not necessarily the actual “elite.”

But you know what I mean.

Was That Headline Really That Bad? Apparently, Yes

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 6:58 am



David Bell’s “terrorism? schmerrorism” piece from Sunday was originally titled “Was 9/11 really that bad?” — at least on the Web. A Google search for that title reveals numerous hits, the first of which is a link to the piece itself. And here is a reproduction of the piece with that title.

But that provocative title has been replaced with the more innocuous headline Putting 9/11 into perspective.

Someone has lost the courage of their convictions. But it may not be Bell, who may have disagreed with the original headline all along. As I learned when I placed my own pieces in The Times, op-ed contributors don’t write the headlines — and sometimes they disagree with the tone of the titles placed on their pieces. I wouldn’t be surprised if the headline change was demanded by Bell himself, who might have thought the original title was too flippant.

AP Owes, But Does Not Give, Correction

Filed under: General,Media Bias,Morons — Patterico @ 12:00 am



Is this a correction?

Four Sunni mosques attacked in late November in the embattled Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad still bear scars from the attacks and all are now either under Shiite Muslim control or closed.

Immediately after the Nov. 24 incidents, an Associated Press story quoted an Iraqi police captain saying the four mosques had been attacked and six men doused with fuel and burned alive at one of them. In some early versions of the AP story, which was updated several times as more information became available, the police officer referred to the mosques being burned or blown up.

Uh, AP? You also reported that Sunnis had claimed the mosques were destroyed:

Sunni residents in a volatile northwest Baghdad neighborhood claimed Friday that revenge-seeking Shiite militiamen had destroyed four Sunni mosques, burned homes and killed many people, while the Shiite-dominated police force stood by and did nothing.

(I understand that some ill-informed leftist bloggers have claimed, without proof, that this language was out there for 20 minutes and never made it into an actual story. I’m not linking these morons out of principle. You can easily find their stupid posts yourself. The name of their moronblog rhymes with the phrase “Madly Ho.” My response to these dunderheads is simple. Uh, ill-informed leftist bloggers? Meet Lexis/Nexis.)

So were four mosques “destroyed,” as the AP claimed in stories still available on Nexis? It sure doesn’t sound that way:

Since then, the AP has confirmed damage at three of the four mosques, including burn damage at two and slight damage at a third.

Unless “destroyed” has been redefined to encompass “slight damage,” it looks like the AP finally owes readers a correction.

This isn’t it, AP. A correction entails owning up to your mistakes and explaining how you got it wrong.

Come on. Man up and give your readers the correction that journalistic ethics demands that you provide.

Weasels.

P.S. At least they did clear up one question I had: the connection between the al-Qaqaqa and al-Meshaheda mosques. Turns out they’re the same:

The fourth mosque named in the AP’s original report, the al-Qaqaqa mosque, also known as the al-Meshaheda mosque, has a broken window and is closed . . .”

Uh-oh! It has a broken window! It must be destroyed!

Will the fringe weasel left ever acknowledge how far out to lunch they’ve been on this story?

Don’t answer that.


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