Les Jones

I remain shocked that reporting from a war zone might be unreliable. Stop the presses! Who would ever imagine that an Iraqi willing to speak with western media might exaggerate or conflate accounts of violence in order to further his own agenda? You would think by now reporters would have learned to quote people and explain who their sources are so readers can assess the reliability of the account.

I am also shocked that right-wing media critics would obsess on increasingly tiny details in order to serve their agenda. We've never seen that before. Why read Malkin's account as confirmation that mosques are being attacked and Sunnis murdered when you can instead fixate on a single account and pretend everything the AP reports from Iraq is whole-cloth fiction?

It would clearly be better if reporters simply stayed in their hotel rooms and parroted military spokesmen instead of trying to do the best they can in an incredibly challenging circumstance.