There is an information war going on in the Middle East, besides the real, bloody one. It is conducted through media monitoring and also through bloggers interested in discrediting the few media organizations conducting independent journalism there. Occasionally it rears its ugly head, and occasionally it claims a scalp – justifiably in the case of the Reuters photographer in Beirut.
The latest incarnation is a row over an AP story from November 24 which has been consuming the U.S. blogosphere, without attracting much coverage this side of the Atlantic. Here it is:
Revenge-seeking Shi’ite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near an Iraqi army post. The soldiers did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
CJR‘s Gail Beckerman takes up the story:
…the bloggers and the U.S. Army, who reflexively denied the initial account, did so not because they were concerned with accuracy. They picked on it because they saw a chance to use a potentially false story…as a way of throwing into question all the reporting from Iraq and, more specifically, undermining the characterization of the situation in the country as abysmal.
AP‘s convincing follow-up to the report was run by the Guardian on November 28.
This was the Iraqi government’s response on November 30:
Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find “fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different.”
He said offenders would be notified and asked to “correct these false reports on their main news programs. But if they do not change those lying, false stories, then we will seek legal action against them.”
Khalaf explained the news monitoring unit at a weekly Ministry of Interior briefing. As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.
Remember that almost all first-hand reporting is done by Iraqis, so government intimidation – in addition to the other risks they run – makes their lives yet tougher.
On issues relating to agency reporting in Iraq I recommend the excellent blog posts Working for Reuters as an Iraqi in Baghdad and the follow-up post, An editor responds. The comments are mostly favourable, although there are a few bloggers that might benefit from a role-swap. (Reality TV execs, here’s a plan – take some of these guys and drop them in Baghdad for a fortnight.)