Soldiers' Angel - Holly Aho

The Mudville Gazette has 3 instances of media error that makes one wonder if they ever investigate anything or pay a lick of attention to what's going on in the world. The first is from AKI, the title of the article, "TERRORISM: VIDEO SHOWS IRAQI CHILDREN PLAYING WITH REMAINS OF U.S. SOLDIER". Here's an excerpt:

Rome, 15 March (AKI) - The children climb down into the crater left by an explosion and start picking up scraps of twisted metal. "Allah is great!" they shout before the camera hones in to show what one boy is holding: torn fabric, the colour of the camouflage fatigues worn by US troops. The next scene shows the same children holding aloft a human leg, shreds of the same camouflage fabric hang from it and the foot is clad in a military-style boot. The children trample the leg and kick it around in the dust.

"Today the Americans came to these parts and the buried bomb blew up their Hummer vehicle," says a teenage boy, adding, "if Allah wants it, the mujahadeen will win."

While the story is meant to show the horror of terrorism and the Jihadist militant groups who have no boundaries or shame, it doesn't help if the story is an inaccurate one. As The Mudville Gazette points out:

The story is wrong on one point though - the uniform is Iraqi, not American. So for what it's worth, the kids are apparently playing with the severed leg of an Iraqi soldier.

Ace has a link to the sickening video and more on the story.

The next two instances of media gaffe are almost laugh out loud funny. The Mudville Gazette points out these errors in this post. While both the Washington Post and the New York Times posted corrections shortly after publishing their stories, it just makes you wonder how these stories made it past their editors in the first place. Go check out the MG to read both of these silly errors and how the NYT tried to blame their lack of investigation skills on the White House.

Greyhawk adds at the end of his post, and I agree:

Perhaps the Post could launch an "Investigative Journalism" department, and use it to notice what the President says?

These aren't minor points in the war on terror - and I'm not assigning motive here, but if you're getting your information about Iraq from US newspapers you are getting it from people who aren't really paying attention.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has yet another New York Times mistake and follow up correction on a story they failed to fully investigate. An excerpt:

The New York Times acknowledged in Saturday's editions that it incorrectly identified an Iraqi man in a front-page story as the hooded figure shown in a photograph from Abu Ghraib prison that became an icon of abuse by American captors.
An editor's note accompanying a front-page story on Ali Shalal Qaissi said the paper ''did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph.''

What a surprise....a lack of research. Maybe they should hire a few bloggers.