Friday, December 2, 2005
PJM has a collection of links on the hoax "insurgent takeover" of Ramadi that AP (and Reuters?) stringers propagated to a credulous Western press. In fact, Reuters still appears not to have reconsidered their story.
Ironically, if you go to AP's home page and click on "Iraq" for latest stories, you find this, but nothing about APTV having possibly passed off a hoax to their subscribers.
Interesting, no? Whether or not paying for the placement of accurate stories should be a scandal, two things are true: first, it is now a scandal, and no one is questioning the stories' accuracy. Here we have a situation where one of the two wire services that all six American news networks rely on overwhelmingly for their footage, and therefore for their reporting (television being, indeed, a visual medium) and therefore one of the primary sources shaping the perception of the American people of the war in Iraq may well have just passed on a hoax, and not just any hoax but an enemy information operation.
This is exactly the type of thing that The Second Draft is all about. It wasn't just that day at Netzarim Junction, it's an ongoing phenomenon.
