The BBC recycles enemy propaganda as new atrocity video

Democracy Project:

The crack reporters at BBC reveal “New ‘Iraq Massacre’ Tape Emerges.” This sensationalist headline is followed by a story based upon a tape from enemy forces, which the BBC “believed to be genuine,” and ignores the contrary evidence reported at the time, which the BBC fails to mention.

The lead three paragraphs:

The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.
The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.
The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

It’s not until the 14th paragraph that the BBC reveals:

The pictures came from a hardline Sunni group opposed to coalition forces.

In between, the BBC’s crack forensic specialist, er, actually a reporter, says that:

The video tape obtained by the BBC shows a number of dead adults and children at the site with what our world affairs editor John Simpson says were clearly gunshot wounds.

Far be it for me to read the newspapers, but this startling bit of sensationalist non-news from the BBC, which is clearly intended to pile on the allegations from Haditha (5th paragraph: “The new evidence comes in the wake of the alleged massacre in Haditha, where US marines are suspected of killing up to 24 Iraqi civilians in November 2005 and covering up the deaths.”) adds nothing to the reporting from last March, and garbles some facts.

...

There is more. The media who wants to lose the war in Iraq is going to be digging for this kind of story the way they dug for panty head prisoners in Abu Ghraid.