Time's massacre
Published June 14, 2006
With Marines being accused of war crimes, the blogosphere is doing
what it
does best: scrutinizing the reporting. In this case, the site
Sweetness &
Light has been on Time magazine's case for what appears to be
justifiable
concerns over its reporting of the Nov. 19 Haditha incident, in which
Marines are under investigation for killing two dozen innocent Iraqis.
Time first broke the story on Haditha in March, four months after the
incident - a delay which too few of the Marines' more ardent accusers
(such
as Rep. John Murtha) failed to question. One of Time's key sources
who had
taken footage of the aftermath was represented only as a "journalism
student." It has since been learned that this eyewitness was Taher
Thabet al
Hadithi.
Here's how Time reporter Aparisim Ghosh described Mr. Hadithi: "[H]
e's a
young local man . He brought the tape to Hammurabi Human Rights. and
they
brought it to us once they found out that we were inquiring about
this."
In fact, Mr. Hadithi is middle-aged and a co-founder of the Hammurabi
Organization. The Associated Press has described him as an "Iraqi
investigator." Either Mr. Hadithi misrepresented himself to Time, or
Time
chose not to mention his association with the previously unknown
Hammurabi
Organization in its original article on the incident.
Then there's the timing issue. Mr. Hadithi says he witnessed Marines
going
house to house killing Iraqis, and videotaped the aftermath the next
day.
This raises the question of why Mr. Hadithi, or the Hammurabi
Organization,
waited at least two months before bringing his tape to the attention
of the
mainstream media, especially since Hammurabi proclaims itself a human-
rights
group. Nor did Hammurabi's other founder, Abdul-Rahman al Mashhadani,
mention the alleged massacre during an interview with the Institute
for War
and Peace in December.
In a June 4 article, Time acknowledged Mr. Hadithi's connections to
the
Hammurabi Organization, and this time labeled him a "budding Iraqi
journalist and human-rights activist." The article concludes, "If
there is
any beneficiary at all of the tragedy, it is Hammurabi.which is
flooded with
new volunteers and free to do its work more aggressively."
Time has had to correct its earlier contention that it received the
video
from Human Rights Watch, which Time identified as working with the
Hammurabi
Organization. Human Rights Watch, as Time now acknowledges, has no
association with Hammurabi, raising yet another question: Just what
is the
Hammurabi Organization? More to the point, did Time adequately vet its
founders for conflicts of interest before printing their story and
putting
our troops at greater risk?
Time has also had to correct its reporting that "one of the most
damning
pieces of evidence investigators have in their possession, John
Sifton of
Human Rights Watch told Time's Tim McGirk, is a photo, taken by a
Marine
with his cell phone that shows Iraqis kneeling - and thus posing no
threat -
before they were shot." Mr. Sifton has now admitted to Time that he
has no
firsthand knowledge of this mysterious photo.
As counter-evidence goes, Time's misreporting unfortunately does
little to
clear up what happened in Haditha. But as a case-in-point lesson in
how the
media can artfully angle a story, it's evidence enough.
