Haditha: Is McGirk the New Mary Mapes? (Is Haditha a Hoax?)
... A key source for McGirk’s report that US Marines in Haditha had deliberately attacked civilians was Thaer al-Hadithi. whom McGirk inexplicably described as “a budding journalism student”. He is a middle-aged man, and was subsequently described by the AP as an “Iraqi investigator.” ...
“a budding journalism student”
The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict
By Marvin Kalb
...
The upshot is a new kind of populist journalism, which strongly influences the story that is being covered. Indeed, the journalist or, in this new age, the commentator, often becomes part of the story.
During the Lebanon War, for example, the bloggers had more influence over the flow of the story than they had had during any other war. Ravi Nessman, the senior Jerusalem correspondent of the Associated Press, thought the influence of the bloggers, especially in the United States, was "unprecedented." When the bloggers [in the U.S.] discovered that photographs had been doctored, "the credibility of the bloggers ... skyrocketed and our credibility plummeted." Nessman added, "After that everything that we did was suspect. And that makes it very difficult to cover a war, to have honest people who are trying, who are not doctoring photographs, who are not taking one side or the other, but who are trying to present the truth of what is going on there, and have everything we say be examined, which is fair, but basically be questioned as a lie, and starting with that premise that the media is lying."