Several times I’ve been on the verge of writing about this story, and now Jesse has nudged me over the edge by adding another wrinkle. On July 24, CNN reported evidence that the Pentagon is making up quotes for its news releases. Compare these passages from releases describing two separate attacks:
| July 13 |
July 24 |
| “The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,” said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. “They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.” |
“The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,” said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. |
The Pentagon claims the fake quotes resulted from “an administrative error”. On the Media ridiculed the story last weekend in its interview with Unidentified Iraqi.
The Washington Post, as far as I can tell, ignored the story until Tuesday’s edition, when it reported on a Pentagon memo about the quotes, and that’s where Jesse noticed it and called it to my attention as “a good example of bad news reporting”. More from Jesse:
Now, should this story have been called “Pentagon Rejects Use of Anonymous Quotes; Its News Releases Cited Nameless Iraqi”? — Or should it have been called “War Propaganda?; Pentagon Uses Same Iraq Quote 2 Different Weeks”. By essentially using the Pentagon’s press release as their story, the AP and the Washington Post are letting the Pentagon do preemptive damage control on a story few if any of us were aware of before (it’s also worth noting that the title of the article used in the Washington Post is probably not the original title used in the AP story, since papers routinely rename AP stories). Bottom line: the issue isn’t that the Pentagon used anonymous quotes — it’s that they fabricated anonymous quotes.
Jesse’s exactly right. I found that a slightly earlier version of the story on the Post’s site, but the headline, “Pentagon Says Anonymous Quote Use an Error”, also avoids mentioning the main point of the story. As Brad DeLong might say, why oh why can’t we have better newspapers?
