Haditha

Ms. Mary Katharine Ham of HughHewitt.com fame has a stunning exegesis on TownHall.com today. (Yes I like that word, but it's pretty well placed here.)

She points out the Standard Operating Procedure of retracting page one stories in small type on page two. Then she lays out who said what and when as the media try to pull this one back in.

A couple of weeks ago, spurred by Congressman John Murtha's assertion that Marines in Haditha had killed civilians "in cold blood," the media promptly rushed to judgment, topping every story with Murtha's cold-blooded soundbite. When word leaked from Pentagon sources that there might be murder charges in the case, the media ran with the "maybe murder" story.

Because no one had yet been charged, and no one was leaking the Marines' side of the story, many became concerned that the slanted coverage might affect the fair treatment and presumption of innocence to which American servicemen are entitled. One of those people was Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, a former Marine lawyer who the Washington Post quoted out of context in its eagerness to get an Abu Ghraib reference into the story.

This week, the media is backing off of its original tone, and it's time to highlight corrections so they don't end up being relegated to the back of the paper and the back of people's minds. So, I give you the Top 3 things to remember about Haditha that the press would like you to forget.

Part of me says that if you expect anything out of Time Magazine more important than "Brangelina's Baby," you deserve what you get. (Man, they owned that story! The Weekly Standard didn't even know what the infant weighed!)

[Insert standard disclaimer here: story in progress, no proof, under investigation...] It will be incumbent on bloggers to hold Time and Rep. Murtha accountable. Ham sets it up here. Keep this link.

Hat-tip: Insty. But don't everybody click over there at once and crash his server...

Posted by jk at June 12, 2006 5:06 PM