Wednesday, January 31, 2007

"Willing Tool, Or An Ignorant Fool?"

That's the subject of Michelle Malkin's latest episode of Vent, that may just show exactly how willing journalists are to use insurgent and terrorist sources to help them win the media battle.

Take a look for yourself. Bryan at HA has a follow-up article.
CBS News reporter Lara Logan, currently the network’s correspondent in Baghdad, used clips in a story about fighting on Haifa Street in Baghdad that apparently came from a video that Al Qaeda’s media arm also used. In her story she didn’t attribute the video to Al Qaeda, but described it as “gruesome pictures obtained by CBS.” They’re gruesome indeed, depicting slain Iraqi Army soldiers after the battle, and showing people walking around the room where the dead men are laying and even apparently picking through their uniforms. In looking at both the Logan report and the video that Al Qaeda released after the January 7 battle, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only did Logan use the same video that Al Qaeda used, but that she worked from the same source tape as well. That means that in all likelihood her source and the source from which Al Qaeda obtained the video (which may be someone actually in AQ or merely connected to it) are one and the same. Background on all this here and here and here. You can download the Al Qaeda video here, but be forewarned–it takes forever even on a cable hookup. And it’s very graphic. Logan’s CBS report is here. She has made a big deal out of CBS only putting it on the web and not broadcasting it on CBS News. It’s her “call for help” to her friends in the media to pressure CBS into broadcasting the story that made this whole thing gain some traction, though it’s going in a direction now that she probably didn’t anticipate.

Need more evidence? Check out this image, and then watch the video for yourself.

Talisman Gate has the original discovery.