Oops!

A while back I reported that a story co-written by Dale Gavlak which related reports that the rebels were responsible for the gas attacks in Ghouta.

Much of the credibility on this story was as a result of Gavlak's journalistic credibility.

It turns out that she did not write the story. She just provided what amounts to editorial help with the writing of the story:

A freelance contributor to the Associated Press whose byline appeared on a controversial story that alleged Syrian rebels had gassed themselves in an accident told McClatchy on Saturday that she did not write the article and has been seeking to have her name removed from it since it was published by a small Minnesota-based website.

Dale Gavlak, a long time contributor from the Middle East to AP, released an email statement to McClatchy and several blogs denying any role in reporting the story, which was published Aug. 29 by Mint Press News, which describes itself with the phrase “independent advocacy journalism.” The article carried her byline along with that of Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian Arab-language journalist.

………

The initial email detailing the filing of the story – Gavlak admits to helping Ababneh convert his Arabic reporting into English – reads “Pls find the Syria story I mentioned uploaded on Google Docs. This should go under Yahya Ababneh’s byline. I helped him write up his story but he should get all the credit for this.”

After seeing the story published under her name and the amount of interest it was generating – in large part because of the credibility lent to it by her relationship with AP, which bills itself as the “world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization” – Gavlak demanded her name be removed. Muhawesh refused.

"We will not be removing your name from the byline as this is an existential issue for MintPress and an issue of credibility as this will appear as though we are lying," Gavlak said Muhawesh responded.

Needless to say, any credibility that I assigned to the story by Gavlak's association with it is now inoperative, and the response of MintPress makes me less inclined to assign any credibility to them.

MintPress has also released a statement on this issue contradicting Dale Gavlak's account.

Needless to say this is now well and truly a clusterf%$#.