(UPDATE:AP REPLY) CBS’ Blog Not Ready To Believe AP Stringer Exposes

Brian Montopoli blogs for CBS’ Public Eye. He self-describes his credentials as a journalist here:

I came to Public Eye from Columbia Journalism Review, where I wrote about everything from the press coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign to the rise of blogging to the future of network news. Prior to my job at CJR, I was a contributing writer at Washington City Paper. I've also written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, The New York Observer, The Washington Monthly, and a number of other publications. Some of my favorite story topics have been youth soccer, public radio, and local politicians, not to mention the TV show Jeopardy!, which was kind enough to offer me a tryout (and merciful enough not to let me on the air).

So, we know how he did on TV’s Jeopardy game show tryout, and there’s no indication of military reporting or war experience, so one might understand that he only gets half the “word” in his post about the exposes of faux reporting by the Associated Press, and others, based on reliance upon lying stringers.

Still, this is the first small break I’ve been able to find within the MSM that there’s even a story. His more experienced brethren within the major media haven’t yet even gotten half the word.

Brian says, “A number of right-leaning bloggers are criticizing the Associated Press for a pair of stories from Iraq,” then outlines a bit of the evidence presented, particularly that CENTCOM questions the “credibility” of the AP’s source, not mentioning much more of the proofs.

Brian then says he hesitates to believe:

It's important to remember that we don't actually yet know if the AP's stories are "bogus." They may well be. They may not. Reporters face unique challenges in a war, and it's worthwhile to question the way they operate in Iraq, on everything from the necessary-but-risky use of stringers to the reliance on named and anonymous sources that may not be trustworthy. But because of their instinctive distrust of the mainstream media, some bloggers have drawn conclusions that, at this point, strike me as premature.

At least, at last, Brian turns toward the game board and admits:

It's important, when looking at a situation like this, to take a step back and try to look objectively at all the facts, even the ones that don't fit our preconceived notions. The blogs deserve credit for raising this issue. Now it's time to get to the bottom of it.

Yes, let’s “get to the bottom of it” and before it’s a footnote to Americans abandoning Iraq due to misleading MSM hysteria-stirring. While we’re at it, let’s get to the bottom of the whole MSM reliance on stringers.

Rick Moran (incidentally, to those readers who blithely dismiss “rightleaning blogs,” Rick has called for withdrawals from Iraq), at Redstate blog, does a superb job of discussing the issue of stringers, and suggests the questions that must be answered by media organizations.

Who are they? What are their backgrounds? Are they journalists? If so, what kind of experience have they had? Have then been vetted to make sure they aren't out and out insurgent sympathizers? Or militia mouthpieces?

Do they have axes to grind against America? How does the reporter in Iraq or the editor back home establish their objectivity or accuracy? Does the reporter on site even try and confirm information from the stringers? If so, how many sources are used to confirm their stories? How do you gauge the reliability of those confirming sources?

This is the nuts and bolts of journalism. Raw information is not news. It has to be poked and prodded, examined and re-examined in a process that is supposed to reduce that information to its most basic and understandable parts and then massaged by the reporter and polished by the editor to appear as "news" in the newspaper or on the TV broadcast.

UPDATE:
The Anchoress has had some communications with CBS Public Eye's Brian Montopoli, which leads to her astonishment that journalists wonder why news consumers' are skeptical.

She just alerted me that the Associated Press' International Editor has replied to the charges by accusing questioners, apparently including CENTCOM, of being "frankly ludicrous and hints at a certain level of desperation to dispute or suppress the facts of the incident in question." The AP says it has new witnesses:

On Tuesday, two AP reporters also went back to the Hurriyeh neighborhood around the Mustafa mosque and found three witnesses who independently gave accounts of the attack" on 6 Sunni men purportedly burned to death by Shiites.

How convenient! But, how reliable or believable?

The AP says it stands by its frequent "police" source, only saying he "has long been known to the AP reporters and has been interviewed in his office and by telephone on several occasions during the past two years," not mentioning his other suspect information.

Nor does the AP reveal whether the AP reporters who "know" him are, themselves, stringers, who may be suspect sources. This AP rework of its initial reporting does not say.

I repeat, a full, in depth, credible, independent examination of major media reporting practices, particularly its reliance on stringers, must occur, and soon.

Here's a place to start, with the reconstruction of the "evolving" AP coverage, courtesy of Mary Katherine Ham, and her link to the other mysterious sources to the AP from Michelle Malkin's blog.