Regret the Error

Seymour Hersh has come out swinging against false reports claiming that he told an Arab TV station that Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered the assassination of for Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Raw Story has a report in which the Pulitzer winner decries articles that completely fabricated comments attributed to him. Raw Story notes that a number of media outlets in the US and Pakistan ran with the item:

Numerous Internet and mainstream publications picked up the story on Monday. Even The Wall Street Journal linked to unverified sources carrying the story. (Screenshot.) U.S. conservative magazine The American Spectator also published a blog with the false information. (Screenshot.)
Hersh told RAW STORY Investigative News Editor Larisa Alexandrovna that he made no such statements.
Following RAW STORY’s Monday evening report, the Journal removed the links from its Web site. (Screenshot.)
“We’ve tried to reach out to people in the media that we know and correct this,” confirmed Alexa Cassanos, director of public relations at The New Yorker, speaking to this reporter. “We’re not even sure where this came from.”
Web sites which appear to be based in India and Pakistan reported that Hersh made the allegation during an interview with “an Arab television channel.” Outlets which reported this include thenation.com.pk (no affiliation with U.S. news magazine The Nation), webindia123.com, thaindian.com and dawn.com.

Back in March, Hersh talked about an “executive assassination ring,” but he made no mention of Bhutto. Nor did he say her name during his recent appearance on Gulf News, an Arab TV station. It appears as though the fake story broke yesterday on thenation.com.pk in Pakistan and spread to other sites. Raw Story reports that the WSJ has removed the links to the offending stories from its website (they appear to have been automatically generated). The American Spectator has updated its blog post, and Dawn.com published this correction:

The story regarding Hersh’s reported claim that Cheney ordered the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was published on our website among other publications. We regret the error.

The correction appears at the top of a story that purports to include quotes from Hersh about this incident. A site in Pakistan also has the same quotes, but neither indicate where they came from. So read this with caution:

‘General McChrystal ran a special forces unit that engaged in High Value Target activity. While I have been critical of some of that unit’s activities in the pages of the New Yorker and in interviews, I have never suggested that he was involved in political assassinations or death squads on behalf of Mr Cheney, as the published stories state.’

‘I have never been asked by any journalist…about such allegations. This is another example of blogs going bonkers with misleading and fabricated stories and professional journalists repeating such rumours without doing their job — and that is to verify such rumours,’ Hersh said.