US - AP "You can't handle the truth"

Princeton speaks out against the AP.

Unlike Reuters, who fired the reporter who doctored his photographs and pulled all his work, the AP continues to stonewall. Big mistake.

That the story is wrong is beyond debate; even the AP now refers to one burned mosque, not four, so the question is not "if" but "how badly" the AP screwed up. Yet instead of an apology, the AP's response to criticism has been to shoot the messenger. The story first broke on the conservative blog www.floppingaces.net and grew quickly within a circle of other conservative blogs and opinion columns. The AP alleged that this was simply a "mad blog rabble" attacking an entirely reputable source. This ignores the fact that Hussein only became a story after the U.S. military and Iraqi government demanded but did not receive a retraction of the original faulty report.

So why have traditional media sources not reported this controversy? Because it is not in their interests to undermine the AP. This summer's "fauxtography" scandal at Reuters, in which photographers were found to have photoshopped evidence of Israeli atrocities during the Hezbollah war, did not hit at the underlying narrative. The storyline stayed the same with different details. If the AP has to issue a correction for all 61 stories in which Hussein was quoted, it will call into question fundamental perceptions about what is happening in Iraq. If Hussein isn't real, it suggests that there are other as yet undiscovered fakes.

If our media is reporting as fact attacks that never occurred substantiated by witnesses who don't exist, then we have a problem. Public opinion about distant events is necessarily based on what is reported in the press. Therefore, we need to be confident that what we read is real. If we have to look at every source with suspicion and fight over every figure, our country cannot make necessary decisions about this war.

No "if" about it.