I first saw this story in the newspaper today; a quick Google search shows it being repeated all over the place. But is it true?
If you actually read the story, amongst all the details (most of which are speculation, some of which are a rehash of the previous story when they left the country ), and there's even pictures, you might not notice that the source for this story is "reports from Iraq".
A more careful reading of the same article, will tell you that the source is "Mosul Eye, a blogger in Iraq".
Now, I'm not saying that the story is untrue. But the whole thing is based on something that someone posted on Facebook?
Has British journalism reached a new low? Probably not. For a while now, I've noticed a number of "news" items which are based on something posted on the internet, with no verification or attempt to check with any other source.
Of course, I can see that it would be very difficult to get verification of this story, and the newspaper reports are peppered with "were reported to be and "An unofficial monitor in Iraq claimed" and "They were said". So there's lots of caveats. But in my opinion, it should have been emphsaised, very strongly, that the whole story is based on the unsubstantiated Facebook post of one person.
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to", Humbert Wolfe.
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