| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| WaPo source for 1,300 dead figure may be fake |
| 2006-03-04 |
| As E&P noted earlier this week, several newspapers and news bureaus have questioned The Washington Post's blockbuster assertion on Monday that around 1,300 Iraqis had been killed in sectarian violence in the country in recent days. The Post had come up with the number after one of its reporters visited the main morgue. Other news outlets, as well as Iraqi officials, pegged the number much lower, between 300 and 400 dead. Such estimates have often proven far off, however. Now the dispute threatens to grow more serious. The Post has stood by its reporting, today attributing its numbers to "morgue workers." It charged that offiicals are under "pressure" to keep numbers lower. It has also cited one Gen. Ali Shamarri, described as an official in the Iraq Interior Ministry's "statistics department," as endorsing a count of at least 1,000 dead. But Thursday night, in a memo to his editors someone posted on the Romenesko site at www.poynter.org, Knight Ridder's Washington editor, Clark Hoyt, raised questions about Shamarri and the 1300 number, calling it a "troubling issue." Indeed, a Google search turned up no mention of Shamarri until this past week. Other news outlets, including The New York Times, cited him in stories but it is unclear if anyone else actually spoke with him, or merely used the Post as a source. Friday night, Knight Ridder moved a story that concluded: "In two days of reporting, Knight Ridder reporters have been unable to locate anyone in the interior ministry with Shamarri's name. Shamarri is a tribal name, though, and it's possible that the official in question could use another name, or that the ministry is pressuring him not to come forward. But no one from the Shamarri tribe with that rank and first name could be located in the statistics department or in other parts of the ministry's main offices. "David Hoffman, the Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news, said that while he wouldn't talk about his paper's sources, he was 'very confident in the validity of the story, and in the soundness of the sources - and I know who they are.' "Hoffman also said that while some could differ about the precise death toll, he was confident that the general thrust of the Post's report - that more than 1,000 Iraqis died during that critical time - was accurate." Earlier, Knight Ridder's Hoyt had written: "Our reporting in Baghdad -- and reporting by other news organizations -- so far has been unable to verify the Post story. The Post quoted officials at the city morgue in Baghdad as saying that they had logged 1,300 bodies of people killed as a result of the sectarian fighting. But when our correspondent examined the books at the morgue, he could find only about 250 bodies logged in as killed in the violence. Our story, quoting the Iraqi Cabinet, said the death toll was 379, which would have included those 250.... "In Baghdad, our correspondents attempted to interview Gen. Shamarri to confirm the Post's account of violence more widespread than previously believed. They were told that no person by the name of Ali Shamarri worked in the statistics department, nor anywhere else in the ministry. We've communicated this finding to the Post." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #11 I feel much better, Perfesser. 'Cause unaccurate isn't a word, and that caused me pain. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-03-04 17:41 |
| #10 Sorry, I was tired. FBA. Fake But Accurate. |
| Posted by: Perfessor 2006-03-04 15:28 |
| #9 I recall that OP called this a couple of days back. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-03-04 12:23 |
| #8 "...very confident in the validity of the story, and in the soundness of the sources." Isn't that what Rather said? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2006-03-04 10:57 |
| #7 "...very confident in the validity of the story, and in the soundness of the sources." Ray Nagin? |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2006-03-04 10:37 |
| #6 Come on, guys, let's not be too hard on the WaPo. Surely, somewhere on the planet there are 1,300 dead people. They may not all be in Iraq, but that's just quibbling over the geographic distribution. Are we going to bash them for one teensy factual error in their story? This *is* the mainstream media after all. If you want facts, go to an encyclopedia. Or Popular Mechanics. What I want to know from the WaPo is what ever happened to Bat Boy? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2006-03-04 10:32 |
| #5 Fake But Unaccurate, perhaps? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-03-04 09:43 |
| #4 Was the WAPO's "field reporter" a leftover Baathist intelligence agent assigned to the WAPO prewar? Much like Time's Vietnam office was staffed by Vietcong and NVA intelligence. The press is naive and destructive. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-03-04 09:24 |
| #3 FBU? |
| Posted by: Theter Flineck1589 2006-03-04 08:56 |
| #2 I believe the story may have been sourced from a new news organization, FBU. |
| Posted by: Perfessor 2006-03-04 07:27 |
| #1 It's like the NYT's are writing the stories for the AP and the Washington Post these days. |
| Posted by: macofromoc 2006-03-04 01:55 |