Manufacturing Quotes

Greyhawk over at Mudville Gazette has an outstanding dissection of some of the "quotations" being commonly used by the media. It's pretty damning.

Whilst avoiding a larger discussion of what happened in Haditha, let's take a look at some of the media coverage of the story.

Starting with this headline – Investigators: Unprovoked Marines Killed Civilians

You've likely seen it before, perhaps heard other references to this unprovoked attack business. But regardless of what happened, unless there was no bomb, unless Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas wasn't really killed, unless Lance Cpl. James Crossan wasn't really wounded, there was a provocation that the Marines responded too. To the best of my knowledge, no one disputes the IED attack that started this incident, and no one disputes that civilians were killed. It seems indisputable that the attack was indeed provoked – a point that's actually a substantial factor in answering other questions regarding the ensuing events.

But quite clearly, according to this headline, the investigators say unprovoked.

Or do they? Here's the first paragraph of the story:

(AP) WASHINGTON Investigators believe that their criminal investigation into the deaths of about two dozen Iraqi civilians points toward a conclusion that Marines committed unprovoked murders, a senior defense official said Friday.

Read that again if you didn't get it the first time. To clarify, we'll name the actual source up front: a senior defense official said investigators believe that's what their investigation points towards. But that's certainly not the stuff of good headlines, so presto change-o, eliminate the middle man and roll out the 24-point Times New Roman. "Investigators: Unprovoked Marines Killed Civilians"

But nowhere in the story are investigators quoted as saying any such thing. A "senior defense official" is.

Or is he? Skip forward one paragraph:

The official …said the evidence developed by investigators strongly indicates the killings last November in the insurgent-plagued city of Haditha in the western province of Anbar were unjustified.

That's closer to an actual quote than the first paragraph, and it says the killings were "unjustified" – something significantly different in meaning than "unprovoked". But quotation marks are noticeably absent from the story – meaning that what we really have is a reporter claiming that an unnamed senior defense official claims that people conducting an ongoing investigation currently believe that the attack was unprovoked.

All beneath a headline that reads Investigators: Unprovoked Marines Killed Civilians. As noted, you must ignore an IED, one death, and one serious injury for that to be true. ("Unjustified" may or may not be more accurate – but it certainly doesn't "sex up" the story to the same degree.)

The media continues to twist things and continues to escalate risk to all of our troops. It's sickening to watch.