Laws, Sausages and Journalism

A little bit of cross-referencing reveals that the photographer "Talal" mentioned in Michael Yon's dispatch Second Chances is Associated Press photojournalist Talal Mohammed.

In "Second Chances," Yon recounts:

To see what the AP might have by way of reliable, mainstream, news resources, on the morning of 07 July, I asked Talal, an Associated Press stringer in Baqubah, if he had heard about the Al Hamari murders, and our conversation went something like this:

“Yes,” answered Talal.

"How many had been killed?" I asked.

"35," answered Talal. Not "about 35", but precisely 35.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"A medic at the Baqubah hospital told me,” Talal said.

“What was the medic’s name?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Talal.

“You didn’t ask?”

“No,” he said. Talal said a doctor told him the same thing, but that he did not know the doctor’s name. He had not asked. Besides which, Talal said, the doctor and the medic were afraid to give their names.

“How were the people killed?” I asked.

“They were shot,” answered Talal as he motioned shooting with a pistol.

“Did you tell someone at AP headquarters in Baghdad?” I asked.

“Yes,” answered Talal.

“Who did you tell?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Talal.

The International Herald Tribune on July 10 makes it clear that Talal's account—an account in which he didn't know the medic or doctor he cited, and didn't bother to ask their names—was received by someone at AP in Baghdad, who felt quite comfortable running the account, not matter how vaguely sourced:

The fight underlines the struggle in Diyala Province, where militants believed to be from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have reportedly left mass graves of victims in areas under their hold.

[snip]

Soldiers have found whole streets and buildings wired with explosives, bomb and weapons factories and prisons run by extremists - and, Iraqi officials say, the bodies of 35 people slain by militants and dumped in a village on the outskirts of Baquba.

Michael Yon's solid documentation—the units involved, their commander's names, the exact GPS coordinates of the site, video, and still photographs of the bodies, and a face-to-face meeting between Yon and AP reporter Robert Reid—and we get al Qaeda "reportedly" left mass graves.

In the second graph, through the magic of the AP's Baghdad Bureau, a nameless medic and fearful anonymous doctor are now, "Iraqi officials."

Otto von Bismarck was once credited with stating, "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making."

As we gain a greater understanding of how one vague, phoned-in account after another is squeezed into an Associated Press casing and squirted across the wires, we're forced to face the reality that like sausages, many of the "facts" in an Associated Press story are those we'd never swallow for a second if we knew what went into them.

Update: What do you know... it only took a week-long blogswarm, but AP finally published on the massacre documented by Michael Yon.