The Media's Absolute Immoral Authority

It turns out that "Iraqi police sources" that that have provided the Associated Press with so many of their Shia on Sunni violence stories since April are not, in fact Iraqi police, and that at least some of the stories they're reported are more than likely false.

This is hot on the heels of an investigation by Patterico that revealed that the L.A. Times may have relied on sources that may be (to be charitable) unreliable.

In both instances, facts and ethically-sound journalistic practices were in very short supply, as "journalists" apparently holed up at the bar in the al Rasheed Hotel breathlessly and uncritically reported what anonymous Iraqi stringers provided to them as news. That this practice of blind reporting is apparently widespread and accepted by the professional media should be very troubling to those who read major news site and make the (apparently erroneous) assumption that the stories being reported are based on objective, verified facts, not the whims of stringers citing sources that do not, in fact, exist.

It is increasingly apparent that the guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas may know about what is actually going on in Iraq than does his professional counterpart hunkered down in the Green Zone in Baghdad, due in no small part to the fact that the reporters in the Green Zone seem to swallow the uncorroborated reporting of Iraqi stringers of dubious allegiances and influences readily, and uncritically.

The media isn't necessarily willfully reporting false stories, they are simply too lazy to verify what they are reporting is comprised of actual facts instead of fantasy. They seem to have adopted a worldview that whatever act is the most depraved, must be the most infallible.

Call it "absolute immoral authority."