By: E&P Staff For months, The New York Times' military reporter Michael Gordon has written one account after another focusing on insurgents in Iraq allegedly using very destructive EFP type explosives, allegedly from Iran, against U.S. forces. He did it again for a story appearing today. As usual, the paper put it on the front page -- above the fold.
It came just as the U.S. military reported that the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq was soaring again this month after a brief downturn.
In the past, most other leading news outlets have taken a less sensationalist approach on these assertions. The Times itself has on occasion re-edited Gordon's stories to provide a little balance, and toned down initial headlines.
Gordon wrote or co-wrote a number of deeply-flawed stories on Iraqi WMD in the runup to the war.
The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times today, to cite two contrasting examples, relies on an Associated Press account by Kim Gamel, which does not mention the new, unproven claims by the U.S. military until the 16th graf: "Odierno's office also said Wednesday that EFPs were used to carry out 99 attacks last month - an all-time high -- and accounted for a third of the nearly 70 U.S. combat deaths as well as 89 of the 614 troops who were wounded. Those figures were nearly double the number in January, his office said."
The BBC carried the EFP claims in paragraph nine of its main story today. Other foreign outlets tended to mention the Odierno statements in passing.
Gordon's New York Times articles are reprinted by numerous papers in the U.S. and in the International Herald Tribune.
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