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You voted for a guy that got a thousand of our boys killed because of shoddy reporting and you’re angry about an NYT writer? How displaced can your anger be?

Sebastian, first off, I agree with your assessment, entirely. And I commend your article and effort to dispel such edification of pure malicious rumor.

That said, I have to admit, this incident does not surprise me and I expect much much more to come. One cannot operate the most secretive government in our history with credible leaks regularly coming out demonstrating the extents of such secrecy, and expect the grapevine to not be filled with rumor and speculation and malicious backlash.

I am not defending the NT Times writer, one iota. But, human beings in a perceived free society being what they are, explanations of an irrational nature will replace any void of facts when the public perceives what at first glance appears to be inexplicable. The human mind does not tolerate inexplicability well, and in the absence of facts to explain, the human mind will conjure explanations. This is a fundamental precept of human cognitive function.

I’ll defend her. There is nothing wrong with the article and it presents a balanced view of what she knew and what she had heard. The story was about how the events surrounding the Iraq the Model blog effected Ali. She didn’t make any accusation that they were CIA operatives. She goes no further than what you quote:

People posting messages on an American Web site called Martini Republic accused the three bloggers of working for the C.I.A., of being American puppets, of not being Iraqis and even of not existing at all.

That is not an accusation, this is reporting what she knew to be true. The Martini Republic is making the accusations.

Do they really need the most important American newspaper to insinuate that they are CIA spies?

Did you read the whole thing? She blows that theory out of the water.

Methinks someone didn’t notice the “Continued…” text at the bottom of the first page…

Most people don’t get beyond the headline. Of those who make it to the story, few read beyond the first paragraph or couple of paragraphs. On the Internet, people often skip after reading the first couple of paragraphs to the last one. The best way to hide something in plain sight is to include it somewhere near the middle of a longish page.

So with this article and others, if you want to get an idea of bias, compare the headline and the first two or three paragraphs (depending on the total length) and the last paragraph on the page with information in the middle. If there is a lot of difference, you are probably dealing with bias or poor journalism.

Of course the biggest source of bias comes not in the articles themselves but in the choice of which articles to include and which to leave out. Compare FOX and NPR. Both report in a fair and balanced way, but they choose very different subjects and points of view to highlight.

My guess is that many NYT reporters just can’t believe that Iraqis might support the U.S. It doesn’t fit into their world view. So for them, this is a man bites dog story. It is probably an example of “sincere” bias.

So is Robert Novak in jail yet?

“Did you read the whole thing? She blows that theory out of the water.”

Where?

She quotes the insinuation, then mentions that the bloggers deny it. That isn’t blowing it out of the water, that is reporting a pro forma denial. She ends the piece with “‘My brothers have confidence in the American administration. I have my questions.’
Now that seems genuine.”—an implication that the rest of it may not be.

Sebastian,

“She ends the piece with “‘My brothers have confidence in the American administration. I have my questions.’”

It’s a good thing that her brothers have confidence.
Over 50% of Americans don’t.

Sebastian, after the initial setup, she treats the bloggers as just what they are: three Iraqis with a blog.

She does suggest that, based on press coverage and meetings with President Bush, they might be being used for pro-US propaganda by the administration, but she doesn’t leave the reader with the idea that they’re US stooges or CIA operatives.

Compare FOX and NPR. Both report in a fair and balanced way…

Right… I don’t know about NPR, but according to FOX we found Saddam’s WMD stash about five different times. More than one in five FOX viewers (22%) actually believes it.

I suppose you guys might want to read the article you’re commenting about. If you did you would understand that the brother being interviewed believes that his brothers put themselves at risk by meeting with George Bush. The conspiracy theories are reported as just that. So what’s the problem?

This is just like the Rumsfeld Questioner, a month or two ago, in that we are asked to ignore the objections and concern of somebody who should traditionally support our policy in Iraq questioning it instead, all because of what a reporter says or does.

Here are the facts: Iraq the Model was a supporting source for many Republican pundits and bloggers who wanted to counter the Democrat position that the Iraqi population has grown hostile to us, by showing people who like and appreciate what we did there. The man in this story though, one of the lead persons on it, has expressed deep concerns about the operation, and the way his Blog has been used for propaganda purposes, so he quits and starts other blogs.

Republicans would rather take issue, personal issue with the reporter, than discuss what it means that this former strong supporter has developed doubts about Bush and Bush’s policies.

You guys keep this up, and your leaders are going to get you into some awful shit, because you will buy that some reporter has a beef with conservatives before you will buy that a Republican has messed things up.

I just wish you guys would deign to live on the same planet the rest of us do.

I read Republicans live in the United States of FairieLand in most Liberal Blogs. Regardless, the fact the Blogs exist already put the Brothers in danger. Do you really think Al Queda reads the New York Times? Al Queda reads Blogs like this one. Hell Sebastian, YOU probably put their lives in danger by posting here. Ironic, eh?

Apparently, the Pentagon thinks Al Queda watches CNN, Aldous, because on a recent broadcast they announced a fictitious start date for the Fallujah offensive hoping to gain Intel on how the Insurgents would react.

Conspicuously absent from your post Sebastian is not evidence of the bloggers authenticity, but evidence of what they’re writing is unique, and the truth. In my estimation, if one were to imagine an actual bogus site, it would look allot like this.

You lose credibility when the majority of links are to partisan American blogs (Chertnoff, Power Line, Andrew Sullivan), which is like observing the Iraqi elections from Amman, Jordan. I find it suspicious reading polling data I’ve seen previous from NYTimes’ David Brooks, and on Scarborough Country. Granted, Al Jeezera would not be a helpful source for current info about the situation on the ground, but the near complete absence of any Arabic news organization sources, caught my attention.

The anecdotal evidence of photos showing Iraqis outside a polling place, pale in comparison to the spread of violence in once ‘Insurgent-free’ provinces guaranteed to see problem free voting. Lastly, the analysis claiming not all Sunnis’ back the Insurgents and want to vote, is lacking in identifying inner-tribal, sectarian factions and their leaders, many of who’ve been previously reported to have such conflicting opinions.

Yet, it is ironic that you’ve cited a respected and honored blogger on the Iraq conflict (bookmarked and a frequent personal source) - Juan Cole. He is the antithesis of everything I just described about IraqTheModel.

I’d be willing to bet my first Social Security check, on what an opinion survey about the Iraq situation taken by those who use the Internet as their primary news source, would reveal. It would starkly contrast such a survey of Fox News/cable network viewers, and therefore cause enough concern on the Right, for them to act.

Burt, you are quite skilled at innuendo, but you have entirely ignored the topic at hand. I don’t have independent sources in Iraq and neither do you. The NYT does, which makes suggesting an Iraqi blogger is a CIA spy with no more evidence than anonymous internet hearsay rather disgusting for an alleged news service. I don’t lose credibility for citing right-wing blogs when the only thing I am citing them for is their analysis of the dangers of this reporters approach. You could choose to attack their logic, but instead you attack their name. That isn’t discussion. That is invective.

Sebastian,

If there is one thing that should be clear to this reader about the IraqTheModel site at least, is that it should demonstrate unequivocally that it has many more independent sources in Iraq - than the NYTimes!

Obviously, you do not recognize what being widely touted by the Right as the primary source of the ‘real story out of Iraq’, does to expectations. I’m not surprised that those of you on the Right take their rather innocuous reading of events as gospel, because it’s making the best of a bad situation.

And, your false accusation that I ‘attack their name’, in a manner that is ‘invective’, means I hit pay dirt. You see, I am a Black man who has already been called a racist, for merely questioning the qualifications of Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzales.

Don’t let him draw you in on this Bert. This is one of the most inane complaints from the right in a while. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post revealed the names of the brothers and that they authored Iraq the Model blog. He also revealed that they were meeting with Bush. The Wall Street Journal outed Ali back in October. And Jeff Jarvis named the brothers in his blog last August. Simply being pro-America in Iraq is enough to get you killed, the accusations of being CIA operatives was not put forth by Boxer, and if any insurgents were to threaten the Iraq the Model bloggers, they wouldn’t have to use Boxer as their justification. I would think the pro-American blog and running for office would be enough justification in their twisted view of the world.

I’m sure all those Iraqi insurgents are always anxiously awaiting the Arts section of the New York Times to see who to target next, but this time, Boxer was a little late.

Sebastian-
The first section does not imply that the bloggers are CIA plants, but sets up the considerable debate about who they are. I quote:

hen I telephoned a man named Ali Fadhil in Baghdad last week, I wondered who might answer. A C.I.A. operative? An American posing as an Iraqi? Someone paid by the Defense Department to support the war? Or simply an Iraqi with some mixed feelings about the American presence in Iraq? Until he picked up the phone, he was just a ghost on the Internet.

Until he picked up the phone, he was just a ghost on the internet… Sarah Boxer is saying she doesn’t know what this guy is before she talks to him. The article, on the whole supports the final assertion, which is probably quite intentionally placed last- as the conclusion.

Ultimately, the picture she paints agrees with the last alternative she cites. In the Article:

Ali explained the name of the Web host, CIATech Solutions, by pasting in an e-mail message he got from an employee of the company explaining that the C.I.A. in the name is short for Complex Internet Applications and that the company “has nothing to do with the U.S. government.”

As for financing, Ali said that Iraq the Model had received private donations from Americans, Australians, French, British and Iraqi citizens. In addition, the brothers were promised money from Spirit of America. But, he added, “We haven’t got it yet.”

And later:

Why did he quit Iraq the Model? When was he going to expose the Americans who made him feel he was on the wrong side?

He was surprisingly frank. The blog had changed him. When the blog began, he said, “People surprised me with their warmth and how much they cared about us.” But as time passed, he said, “I felt that this is not just goodwill, giving so much credit to Iraq the Model. We haven’t accomplished anything, really.”

His views took a sharp turn when his two brothers met with the president. There wasn’t supposed to be any press coverage about their trip to the United States, he said. But The Washington Post wrote about the meeting, and the Arabic press ended up translating the story, which, Ali felt, put his family in real danger.

She quotes him liberally, talks about him like a real person, and does not present any journalistic evidence or personal supposition that his blog was astroturfed by the defense department.

But the Republicans need their threat, their irresponsible Liberal journalist of the week, and it seems they aren’t worried about letting the facts get in the way of their good stories. Personally, this angers me greatly. She has given a fairly balanced and positive portrait of a troubled but still optimistic Iraqi. But instead of focusing on that, your people twist the words and mangle the context to make something dark and evil out of an article that actually makes something of an admirable figure of its subject.

You guys speak of dangerous journalism. I think the most dangerous journalism is that which seeks after some ideological position, at the price of being oblivious to what’s really going on. It’s not about finding our truth out there, but the truth, that is, the facts, the wisdom, and the understanding, that we are too occupied in our own lives and occupations to seek out for ourselves. Fact is, you will never get reporters who are entirely bereft of political positions, but you can get reporters who put journalistic perception ahead of political prejudice.

Unfortunately, Republicans seem intent on walling themselves behind walls of comfortable assumptions, impervious spin, and unassailable opinion. You guys act like it’s your world, and the rest of us just live there. You guys can’t continue that way forever and not do harm to yourselves and the rest of us.

Stephen D makes a good point. The point of this is how awful this New York Times reporter was to spin a story, and get the facts wrong. But the attack itself is misleading. So now we have an angry misleading article about the dangers of misleading articles.

I’ve followed Iraqthemodel since they started. I prefer Zeyads blog better http://healingiraq.blogspot.com

He was the one that got the other guys started.

He is also the one whose cousin was murdered by U.S. soldiers, and he still remains somewhat pro-American.

Interesting stuff.

Julia