Thursday, November 17, 2005
Newspapers Apologize for Buying Anti-War Bullshit
This site exposed a few days ago the utter lies of one Jimmy Massey, a former Iraq war vet whose lies and tall tales about alleged crimes by American soldiers were exposed by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Now, newspapers which ran his charges without any investigation whatsoever are apologizing for not doing any background or research.
The tide has turned against liberalism in the media!
We didn't do enough to verify claims
This is a blockbuster, especially since much of the media trumpets the statements of the left and then shy away when those statements prove to be completely false.
This site exposed a few days ago the utter lies of one Jimmy Massey, a former Iraq war vet whose lies and tall tales about alleged crimes by American soldiers were exposed by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Now, newspapers which ran his charges without any investigation whatsoever are apologizing for not doing any background or research.
The tide has turned against liberalism in the media!
We didn't do enough to verify claims
On May 30, 2004, we published on this page a commentary about an Iraq war veteran named Jimmy Massey, who claimed that he witnessed his fellow Marines killing innocent Iraqi civilians during fighting the year before.
The piece, written by a Bay Area freelancer, was a condensed version of a question-and-answer article that appeared in The Sacramento Bee two weeks earlier.
In December 2004, our news pages carried an Associated Press story about Massey testifying at a Canadian hearing for a U.S. military deserter seeking asylum. Massey's accounts got a lot of media attention around the country and the world. So did the release of his book, "Kill, Kill, Kill."
Last weekend, 18 months after our original piece, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a front-page story contending that Massey exaggerated and fabricated some of his claims about atrocities committed by U.S. troops.
Among the incidents the Post-Dispatch story challenged were at least two that were mentioned in the commentary in our paper.
A second Post-Dispatch story focused on the media that had published Massey's claims without trying to verify their veracity. One of the editors quoted was David Holwerk, editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee, who said he wished that they had done a more thorough job of checking on the freelance submission.
I will say the same thing for us.
We relied on our colleagues in Sacramento but should have done our own verification. Sacramento did confirm with Massey the responses in the commentary, but it did not seek a response from the Marine Corps.
Around the country, other media are guilty of the same failures.
This week, columnists and others have picked up on these failures and the discrepancies noted in the Post-Dispatch story. Today, the attention is as much on the media as it is on Massey's allegations.
We're making readers fully aware of all this for two reasons: First, we want to acknowledge the damage done to our credibility because we failed to check out adequately the information that appeared in our publication. Second, we want to assure you that we have learned from this experience and will beef up procedures to prevent a painful repeat.
This is a blockbuster, especially since much of the media trumpets the statements of the left and then shy away when those statements prove to be completely false.
