6/09/2006

Shades of Dan Rather

There are holes in the Haditha massacre story, which has been changing, even in Time Mag.  They are discussed in American Thinker by a Wash DC lawyer, Clarice Feldman, drawing on extended discussion (and exposure) at Sweetness and Light, which in addition to inconsistencies has the Time skinback:

In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "a day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME." In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error.

Feldman winds up her version of Sweetness & Light’s coverage:

The sum and substance of this thumbnail sketch on the Haditha claims is that it follows so closely the template for the TANG [Texas Air National Guard] and [Valerie] Plame stories. Take a reporter with an anti-Administration agenda [apparently Time’s Tim McGirk, as in his at best weird Taliban coverage post-9/11], an interested group (think of the Mashhadanis [Reuters cameraman with insurgent ties and man who fed info] as the VIPS in the Plame case or Burkett and Lucy Ramirez in the TANG case) and a story too good to be checked and circumstances where the people attacked [Marines] are limited in what they can quickly respond to and you get a story which smells to me like it will soon be unraveled.

This time, I’m betting the consequences to the press which rushed to judgment will be more disastrous than it was to Dan Rather. I surely hope so.  [Italics added]

The story too good to be checked, yes.  Reporters and editors smell that meat a-cookin’, as if they were Springfield trough-feeders, and away they go.  I’m staying tuned.

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