Jeff alluded to the latest on “Capt. Jamil Hussein” in an update to Pablo’s last post, but it is worth explicitly noting Curt’s latest update at Flopping Aces also.
Apparently CPATT rep Bill Costlow has confirmed that Jamil does not have Hussein in his name, and he has also confirmed that the MoI spokesperson DID speak to the AP and confirmed that he was their source. Curt then links to Bob Owens’ prior post reporting the responses from Jon Ham (former managing editor of the Durham Herald-Sun), Larisa Alexandrovna (of the liberal-leaning Raw Story), Jay Rosen (of New York University’s PressThink), Committee of Concerned Journalists Founding Chairman, Bill Kovach, and Peter Y. Sussman (from the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists) on the ethics of using an undisclosed pseudonymous source. There is also the AP’s stated policy of not using pseudonyms, which has apparently been breached.
Elsewhere in the wingnut echo chamber, Allahpundit does not think this is a big deal:
Iraq’s a dicey place; rules get bent to protect people. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
The first flaw in that argument is that the AP could have ethically used a pseudonym, provided it disclosed it was doing so, as well as the reason for doing so (per those consulted by Bob Owens). As an aside, I would think it much better practice to use disclosed, pseudonymous sources than retretaing to anonymity, as the AP seems to have done, as pseudonyms provide at least some measure of transparency that anonymous sources do not. For example, the use of the pseudonym “Jamil Hussein” allowed readers to discover that the source of the Burning Six story appears to have been a source for al Jazeera and that the AP itself could not verify at least one of his prior claims and had contrary information—matters that bear on the source’s credibility. But I digress.
The second flaw in Allapundit’s argument is that “Jamil X” may not have been using the pseudonym for reasons of personal safety. It is also likely (and perhaps concurrently true) that the pseudonym was employed because “Jamil X” is (or was) barred from speaking to the media as a condition of his employment. The AP and others may suspect that “gag rule” may have been put into place to allow the MoI to manipulate the news, but it may also have been enacted to prevent unsubstantiated rumors or propaganda from being legitimized and further fueling the ongoing conflict. As I previously noted, the legitimization of “unofficial” police reports raise issues that go far beyond the “Jamil X” case—issues as yet unaddressed by the AP. As it stands, “Jamil X” was able to place reports of incidents into circulation for which there may be no official record, which suggests possible malfeasance, either by the police or by “Jamil X.” Moreover, the AP has on at least one occasion conflated the unsubstantiated report with official police reports which is sloppy at best.
Allahpundit helpfully links to a post by Patterico, cautioning that the Burning Six story may yet turn out to be true. We have reason to believe that an independent confirmation or debunking of the claim that four mosques were burned may be in our near future. For now, the fact that the AP’s re-investigation of the original story failed to confirm the four burnt mosques and offered a differing report on what happened to the bodies should suggest how shaky the story is, as do the denials reported by the New York Times and Washington Post (though this case reminds us all of the difficulty in proving a negative).
But the current data suggests there was no Capt. Jamil Hussein, as the AP claimed. There apparently was a police captain operating under an undisclosed pseudonym with undisclosed—and perhaps multiple—motives for doing so. He provided at least two unsubstantiated stories to the AP, and at least 40 that were unreported by other news sources. He provided reports of incidents outside the jurisdictions of the two stations where “Jamil X” apparently worked, which should raise questions of the quality of Jamil X’s knowledge of those alleged incidents as well. At worst, the bloggers who questioned the physical existence of such a person were “fake, but accurate”—which is the best that can be said of the AP and Jamil X himself.
Finally, Curt relays from CPATT rep Costlow that:
There has been some sideline discussion between MOI PA and the AP. We’re at a point where the MOI needs to look to the future and establish a new relationship with the AP—hopefully it’ll be a friendship that enables them to avoid issues like this in the future.
Curt is concerned:
I don’t know about you but this sounds suspiciously like the MoI has agreed to admit he is the source for the AP in exchange for a better relationship with the AP…
There are other possible interpretations of the comment. It may be that the MoI is going to rethink its policy of trying to arrest unofficial police sources in return for the AP rethinking its apparent practice of reporting unofficial accounts without at least running them by the MoI to see whether they can be confirmed.
It’s true, we don’t know his motive for using a pseudonym. We also don’t know why he’d use a pseudonym instead of remaining totally anonymous. We also don’t know if the MOI spokesman is telling Bill Costlow the truth. Quite frankly, I don’t trust any of the Iraqi participants in this incident anymore.
My point in that post wasn’t to say this isn’t news (if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have posted on it) but to say that it’s not the BIG news Curt and Bob Owens are making it out to be. It’s BIG news if and only if we have proof that the AP conspired to give Hussein a pseudonym because it knew he was full of shit and wanted to keep his identity quiet for that reason. We don’t have that proof; we’ll never have it unless Jamil himself surfaces and makes the allegation. I frankly don’t think it’s true in the first place. At the worst, I think the AP got duped and was negligent in not checking its stories better. And negligence, while damning, is considerably less damning than fraud.
What’s really bugging me here is the way this all smacks of trying to salvage a scandal. There are still valid, serious questions about the burning six incident and how Jamil could have known about attacks happening around town. Those stand on their own merits, whether or not he used a pseudonym. But to pitch the pseudonym thing as some big scoop comes off as spin designed to move the goalposts after the humiliation of finding out that Jamil exists. You can’t pump the “PRODUCE JAMIL HUSSEIN!” angle for weeks, and then, when they produce him, turn on a dime and say, “AHA! PSEUDONYM!”
If he’s a liar, by all means, let’s chase that down. But based on what we now know and are likely to know, it’s a separate issue from the pseudonym.
Can somebody please explain to me why the AP couldn’t find or identify their own source. A source who was already identified by name and title, not to mention location in about sixty different articles?
Some reason they couldn’t have said, “He does so exist you boys, I installed two way mirrors in his pad in Brentwood. And he come to the door in a dress. But we’re using a fake name so his wife won’t find out.” when people started asking questions?
I mean, he may be real, the stories may be true, but the AP is run by a bunch of idiots.
It seems to me that the AP doesn’t really care one way or the other, as long as it sells papers.
Allah,
I don’t think that’s the worst scenario, I think it’s the best one for them. There’s fraud somewhere along the line, and AP’s stark refusal to even consider, let alone admit, that its at least been had leaves their motives open to question.
There’s a lot of coming clean to be done here, and there’s still a boatload of open questions regarding Jamil X’s reportage.
I’d like to know who invented what and when they invented it. AP’s behavior in this makes it appear as though they really don’t care to get it right, only that we believe what we’ve been told.
Or we can start with the proposition that the AP are vile smelly propagandists and work from there. Sheesh – this whole “fair play” ethos is just more than a bit nauseating. This ain’t Judge Wapner’s freaking court. Hang the dirty hippies.
AP is to news as AccuWeather is to hurricane predictions.
First off, let me start by saying that I respect allah and Patterico and understand their reluctance to jump in with both feet on the issue of whether JGIX has “Hussein” in his name.
But…it seems to me, that misses the point. Not misses the mark, as allah seems to be saying, but missing the point of Bob and Curt’s analysis.
If the issue is, that there is a pattern of staged events, (Green Helmet guy), photoshopped photos, suspiciously vague and obscure “sources” for stories that all have an agenda…then the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Allah correctly points out that the underlying story about the four mosques (which is now magically transformed to only one…maybe), being blown to pieces and burned to the ground (vandalized), and women and children murdered, (apparently not), while 18 others were killed in cold blood (no longer being presented as true) PLUS six immolated men, dragged into the street, doused with kerosene and watched by coalition forces while they writhed on the ground, then were summarily shot in the head, taken to a hospital freezer, then to a cemetery.
If JGIX is the reason the story is asked to be believable (the purpose of a source, as I understand sourcing), then his credibility is being put at issue by the AP and the AP is vouching for it.
Are we constrained from questioning the credibility of the source? If his credibility is brought into question due to the fact that the stories that he is “sourcing” turn out to be flagrant falsehoods, at what point are we to stop inquiring about him?
Isn’t the very nature of him being a voluntary source…all about his credibility lending proxy credibility to the stories themselves?
If he has an agenda, and the AP has an agenda, isn’t the objectivity of the stories they produce fair game for inspection and review?
This is not an issue that arises here, for the first time out of whole cloth. Nor is it one of trifling significance. Green Helmet guy staged news, in obvious complicity with the agents around him who then produced this fraud as “news”.
When confronted with an agenda by the “news” agencies to tell as horrific a story as they possibly can…and when bloggers caught the faux scenes, it prompts the inference that those who have an agenda to broadcast a particular viewpoint may not be duped, but rather, complicit in oops, not finding, the rather obvious unworthiness of the underlying stories.
So, who Green Helmet Guy is, takes on a life of its own. Why did he stage events? Who is he?
Why is JGIX any less worthy of investigation? Who is he? Why would he act as a source of non-events? How could he possibly know the things outside his district?
The BIG news, that Bob sees and allah doesn’t, is that the pattern and practice of foisting caricatures of truth on the public as acceptable journalism, continues unabated. I am not interested in a leftist agenda that gives us a “message” through phony vehicles.
If they have to use sources who know nothing, to report events that didn’t happen in order to present me with facts that caricature what is happening on the ground, so that I believe their story that is true in spirit but not in reality, tell them to save it. I’m not interested.
And, I think…it’s important to know if that is taking place. If Bob and Curt are alerting us to the that fraud, how is that a trifling issue?
It matters little whether the AP gave JGIX his “Hussein” nom de plume or he gave it to them. It matters only that they and their apologists suggest that his credibility is not in issue. They were more than happy to stick a thumb in the eye of everyone who questioned JGIX’s credibility, by saying…”Look, MOI admitted his existence.
Why is it now out of bounds to say back to them, wait a minute, he didn’t say any such thing, because there is no person as “Hussein”.
It seems to me, that is a very normal response to the precise language used by the AP in sticking their tongue out at their “critics”. They said very explicitly “His AUTHENTIC NAME is Jamil Hussein. Some officers use fake names, but he DID NOT”
Since the AP put that very issue in play, why is it out of bounds, in the larger scope of the credibility of their sources and stories as a whole, to confront them on an issue that they put into play?
And color me a bit jaded, but how does the AP get duped after their source and their story has been called into question? They didn’t retract and correct one single item in the underlying story. They stood by the story and stood by their source. If the facts are contrary, and they know that… how do they do that if not by complicity?
The issue of whether JGIX is credible, is not divorced from the ways in which the AP attempted to pump up his credibility.
He’s a police officer, he’s willing to go on the record using his own name…unlike other police officers, we know him well and because of this he is reliable, therefore the understories he sources are reliable.
If JGIX indeed is not doing and saying the things that are attributed to him, if he is someone different and is saying something different, then their very use of him is called into question.
And as a part of a pattern and practice that has become all too frequent…it just so happens…that the stories he sources and tells, aren’t true, but do accomplish the mission of furthering the leftist agenda. How convenient.
This story is big, even if we examine the smaller parts of it to put the whole together.
I respectfully disagree with allah and agree with Bob.
Good point McGehee…
Compare:
Accuweather
NOAA
Now ask yourself: which analysis is the product of meteorologists and which the product of a dirty hippy alarmed by the weakness in the oil market and looking to do his part to help bid prices up so as to discredit our evil oil-soaked President? Hint: The “Featured Area” on the Accuweather site is… yup … Global Warming.
allah
Let’s just say I’m as tired of hearing excuses for AP which has allegedly stepped on its collective dick several times, as the dismissive meme with each Islamist attack in the US (against El Al at LAX, against Jews in Seattle, against students in Chappel Hill) as a “lone nutjob.”
How many swallows does it take to make a spring?
EE just ate my comment, so I’ll have to be brief.
I thank Allah for his thoughtful reply—and I have always found him thoughtful.
Reasonable people can disagree as to how big a deal this is—I probably fall between Allah and Curt/Bob on the spectrum.
I tend to agree with Pablo that the AP being duped is not the worst-case scenario possible. Allah is giving the AP the benefit of the doubt here, but the pattern outlined by cfbleachers raises the issue of whether the AP should be getting that benefit of the doubt at this point. Allah agrees about the many other problems with the AP’s Burning Six story—so what does it say about the AP that they refuse to address the inconsistencies raised by its own re-investigation of this story?
I disagree with this point of Allah’s:
The fact is that the AP never produced him, and –as I write this—its rolling response page for this story does not acknowledge the pseudonym issue.
Nor were the bloggers who questioned Jamil Hussein’s existence humiliated in this case. Based on the current data, a more accurate word would be that they were misled—by “Jamil X” or the AP or both (and by one intentionally).
This is why I also disagree with Allah when he writes that:
Based on the current data, it seems that the MoI (whatever one might think of its media policy or rep generally) correctly stated that it did not have a “Jamil Hussein” on its payroll, and it was the MoI—not the AP—that identified “Jamil X.”
Of course, the AP may claim that the MoI was lying both times, that “Jamil X” was and is named Jamil Hussein. But if past is prologue, they will just want to continue to sweep the story—the possible pseudonym, the mystery mosques, the mystery morge, etc.—under the proverbial rug.
If Jamil is that Jamil, and he’s full of shit, and he’s the AP’s source, and they stand by him, then the AP is full of shit.
They need to corroborate the story, or admit they’ve been duped. You think that by now they’d have interviewed every living soul in the area, and documented the atrocity in full detail.
Yet they have not.
By Any Memes Necessary
Author: Jamil X
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[…] the case as one of whether the source existed, never acknowledged that he was pseudonymous, in violation of the AP’s own policies. Nor did the AP directly confront the falsity of his stories of destroyed […]
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