'Wash Post' Responds to Knight Ridder's Questions About Iraq Source

By: E&P Staff As E&P noted earlier this week, several newspapers and news bureaus have questioned The Washington Post's blockbuster assertion on Monday that around 1,300 Iraqis had been killed in sectarian violence in the country in recent days. The Post had come up with the number after one of its top reporters visited the main morgue. Other news outlets, as well as Iraqi officials, pegged the number much lower, between 300 and 400 dead.

Now the dispute threatens to grow more serious. The Post has stood by its reporting, and charged that offiicals are under "pressure" to keep numbers lower. It has also cited one Gen. Ali Shamarri, described as an official in the Iraq Interior Ministry's "statistics department," as endorsing a count of at least 1,000 dead.

But Thursday night, in a memo to his editors someone posted on the Romenesko site at www.poynter.org, Knight Ridder's Washington editor, Clark Hoyt, raised questions about Shamarri and the 1300 number, calling it a "troubling issue." Indeed, a Google search turned up no mention of Shamarri until this past week. Other news outlets, including The New York Times, cited Shamarri in stories but seemingly did not speak with him, instead using the Post as a source.

Friday night, Knight Ridder moved a story that concluded:

"In two days of reporting, Knight Ridder reporters have been unable to locate anyone in the interior ministry with Shamarri's name. Shamarri is a tribal name, though, and it's possible that the official in question could use another name, or that the ministry is pressuring him not to come forward. But no one from the Shamarri tribe with that rank and first name could be located in the statistics department or in other parts of the ministry's main offices.

"David Hoffman, the Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news, said that while he wouldn't talk about his paper's sources, he was 'very confident in the validity of the story, and in the soundness of the sources - and I know who they are.'

"Hoffman also said that while some could differ about the precise death toll, he was confident that the general thrust of the Post's report - that more than 1,000 Iraqis died during that critical time - was accurate."

Now, in Sunday's Post (online now), Deborah Howell, the paper's ombudsman, noted that Knight Ridder's questioning "was not viewed with equanimity in The Post's newsroom. "

Several in the newsroom felt the complaints about the death toll, and lack of credit for Knight Ridder reporting in other stories, were "unwarranted." Hoffman still feels strongly "that The Post's story was groundbreaking and accurate." Post staffers believe the leak of the Hoyt memo was "deliberate."

Hoffman told Howell: "I am confident in the validity and accuracy of our [death toll] story. I am confident in the soundness of our sources. I am aware of the identity of all the sources and the process of the reporting."

Ellen Knickmeyer, the lead Post reporter, was in the morgue and reported what she saw personally, Howell points out. Howell reveals that Hoffman told her he didn't know why other reporters couldn't find Shamarri. "I can't speak for them," he said.

But he did not go on to explain who and where he was., so the question remains open. And Howell concludes: "Frankly, there is no way at this point that I can say anything authoritative about Knickmeyer's story or Hoyt and Walcott's complaint. I can only follow the story and see where it leads."

Here is an excerpt from the Hoyt memo that kicked off this dispute:

"Our reporting in Baghdad -- and reporting by other news organizations -- so far has been unable to verify the Post story. The Post quoted officials at the city morgue in Baghdad as saying that they had logged 1,300 bodies of people killed as a result of the sectarian fighting. But when our correspondent examined the books at the morgue, he could find only about 250 bodies logged in as killed in the violence. Our story, quoting the Iraqi Cabinet, said the death toll was 379, which would have included those 250....

"In Baghdad, our correspondents attempted to interview Gen. Shamarri to confirm the Post's account of violence more widespread than previously believed. They were told that no person by the name of Ali Shamarri worked in the statistics department, nor anywhere else in the ministry. We've communicated this finding to the Post."