All Blog Posts from Public Eye

I'm a bit late to this, but, hey, I was out last week. And the story of the "journalists arrested over [a] fake bomb" is not one that should pass unremarked.

Here's what happened: Two journalists for the Daily Mirror were carrying the alleged fake bomb onto the London Underground when they were stopped by railway staff, who questioned them and eventually called police. The men were soon arrested under the British Terrorism Act, with police raiding their homes.

The journalists say they were just undertaking investigative journalism, calling the object not a bomb but a "tracking device" designed to test rail freight security.

"The aim of the police is to undermine journalists and stop them carrying out investigations of legitimate nature," the Daily Mirror head of news, Gary Jones, told the Guardian. Last year, a Mirror spokesman told the paper, "Mirror journalists attempted and succeeded in planting a fake bomb on a nuclear train, which highlighted serious security lapses. We therefore felt that it was a legitimate and justified journalistic exercise to repeat the action in the interests of public safety."

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At this point it’s news to nobody that sites like YouTube are political players. (Though to what extent, and to whose benefit, remains up for argument.)

But Salon today dissects the anatomy of John McCain’s recent gaffe where – in response to an audience member’s suggestion that America “send an airmail message to Tehran” – he half-sang “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boy’s song “Barbara Ann” in front of a South Carolina crowd.

Was it news? None of the big boys in the mainstream media outlets considered it worth mentioning. Only the Georgetown Times – and even then 450 words into a 750-word story – decided the musical attempt at humor was newsworthy.

Despite this almost-unanimous omission, McCain’s song ended up becoming a national story. How?

An anonymous/guerilla opposition researcher uploaded the video to YouTube and then made sure to pass it along to the Drudge Report, where it became the lead item and entered the political mainstream.

Opposition researchers – people retained by different politicians or political groups to dig up inconvenient information about politicians on the other side – are doing a lot of the legwork for mainstream journalists nowadays, finding inconsistencies in candidates’ records and dirty little secrets in their past. And the public’s dissatisfaction with the mainstream media seems to ratchet up by the month, giving alternative media outlets increasing momentum and influence.

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Journalists regularly need to sort through conflicting information to get to the truth. But one story this week showed how hard it can sometimes be to seperate fact from fiction.

On Tuesday, CBSNews.com posted an Associated Press story about a bombing in Ramadi, Iraq, that killed at least 18 boys at a park frequented by young soccer players. For roughly 30 minutes, it was the top story on the Web site.

Then producers saw another wire report that questioned the story, based on statements from a military spokesperson who spoke of a controlled explosion in same area that wounded 30 but caused no fatalities.

"We had to move the story out of the number one position, insert the conflicting material and change the headline to reflect the conflicting information," said Dan Collins, senior producer at CBSNews.com.

"It's not unusual to get conflicting information on a breaking news story, but I thought this was very unusual," said Collins. "Iraqi police and the government stood by [the original story] for hours after U.S. sources revealed their information."

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Following last week's bombings in Mumbai, (formerly known as Bombay) chronicles of the event have inevitably drummed up references to two past events that bear similarities, the bombings in Madrid in March 2004 and the London bombings in July 2005. Bob Schieffer introduced the "Evening News'" first story on Mumbai on the day it occurred, July 11: “Two years ago, terrorists struck rail lines in Madrid, Spain. Just a year ago, it was the subways of London. Today, the target was a commuter rail line in Mumbai, India.” But why is media coverage of the events in Mumbai not on par with the level of attention that the Madrid and London bombings received?

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As the risks of reporting from Iraq become more and more evident, reports from on the ground following events such as yesterday’s bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra become all the more valuable. Global Voices has a collection of just that – and it’s definitely worth a look. They include a link to a blog written by freelance journalist Christopher Allbritton, whose interview with a military commander was cancelled following the incident:

This all happened when I was in the Green Zone today to interview Lt. Gen. Dempsey, commander of the training command. He cancelled his interview, which baffled his poor public affairs office. He commented that what was happening must be really big if Dempsey is canceling interviews as he’s usually not involved in the day-to-day war fighting details. (“He’s not in the 5-meter knife fight,” the PAO said.) Also, I saw several Apache helicopters taking off from the Green Zone, which is also unusual. Usually, it’s Blackhawks that fill the air. Other military source sources have said the Americans have scaled back all patrols, especially in Shi’ite neighborhoods.

A link to another dispatch from an Iraqi dentist follows. At his blog, he describes the atmosphere following the bombing:

The situation in Baghdad is bad, bad, bad. I had to flee work early and return home after news of large protests in Shi'ite districts, and several attacks against Sunni mosques in the Baladiyat, Sha'ab and Dora districts by angry rioters. Sunnis are being blamed for the attack against a Shia holy shrine in Samarra, a largely Sunni town.

The streets look empty now, and all stores seem to be closed. I can hear gunfire and American helicopters and jets circling the skies.

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