Media puts its ignorance on display in Iraq

Jack Kelly:

A great moment in journalism it wasn't. At 6:58 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, Aug. 14, Agence France Presse distributed a photograph by Wissam al-Okaili, an AFP stringer, of an elderly Iraqi woman holding two cartridges in one hand. The caption that accompanied the photo read: "An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she said hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."

I used the word "cartridges." The caption writer used the word "bullets." Let me explain the difference for the benefit of the photo editors at AFP. A cartridge consists of three elements: the bullet (the pointy thing at one end); the propellant that forces the bullet through the barrel of the gun when the trigger is pulled; and the casing, in which the bullet and the propellant are held together until the cartridge is fired. But once the cartridge is fired, the bullet and the casing go their separate ways.

The casing of the cartridges in the woman's hand is clearly visible, which alone should have told AFP's photo editors that the only way these "bullets" could have hit the woman's house was if they'd been thrown at it. They'd obviously never been fired.

There were other tips. Bullets deform when they strike something (like, say, a house in Sadr City). The pointy things don't stay pointy.

Modern firearms have rifling -- grooves in the barrel that cause the bullet to spin, making it more accurate. Rifling leaves striations on bullets which actually have been fired. There are no striations on the bullets in the AFP photograph. But if the editors couldn't grasp the significance of having the bullets still in their casings, I suppose these other clues would be too subtle for them.

Which is too bad, because Wissam has fished in these waters before. On July 10, AFP transmitted a photo by him which shows what seems to be the same old woman holding a larger caliber cartridge. That caption for that photo read: "An elderly Iraqi woman inspects a bullet which she says hit her bed during an alleged overnight raid."

In that photo, the woman had the wit to hold the cartridge so the casing isn't visible, but the bullet is not deformed, and there are no striations. It hadn't been fired, either.

There is no question the photo is a fraud. The question is, whose? Did the old woman fool the AFP photographer? Was the photographer blowing smoke by his photo editor? Were they all in on it?

AFP issued a correction of sorts Aug. 15, adding the word "unspent" before bullets, and deleting from the caption the woman's claim the bullets "hit her house." But AFP should have acknowledged the photo was a fraud, and sent out a kill notice.

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Have you noticed that almost every journalistic fraud has been by those trying to undermine the war effort? It would be one thing if these people were being taken in by enemy information ops, but they appear to be perpetrating them without outside assistance. AFP has no responded to Kelly's question concerning whether the photographer has been disciplined. I hope he follows up on that questions and writes another column on the subject, because it will tell us a lot about how committed AFP is to the truth or how committed it is to enemy propaganda.