Thursday, December 14, 2006

AP fakes news again -- rewriting the Korean war this time

New York Post
[...] The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily's account was chilling. It was also - as AP should have known - a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily's claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

When I later confronted AP editors with the facts and records that showed their source Daily to be a fraud, they blew me off. What would a historian know about this topic after all, or a soldier?

The AP didn't issue a retraction, or even attempt to reinvestigate; and it certainly didn't withdraw the story from the Pulitzer competition. Instead, it attacked the messenger.
More AP fakery at Hot Air

4 comments:

Tim H said...

Here's the response from the Associated Press:

http://tinyurl.com/vbl6j

Purple Avenger said...

Here's the response from the Associated Press

Denials of Iraq fakery validate Korean War fakery precisely how?

You're gonna have to talk slow use short words and explain that one to me, cuz I'm kinda slow.

Anonymous said...

The AP has attempted valiantly to justify its illgotten Pulitzer. AP writer, Charles Hanley, who together with another AP scribe, published a book on the subject, appears to have made the subject of No Gun Ri his life's work in an attempt to legitimize his original tale. He has yet to present both sides of the story. Fifty six years later, he's still trying to smear the U.S. Army. So much for objective reporting!

Purple Avenger said...

AP = (A)ll (P)ropaganda, all the time