The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, Ian Mayes, responds to Zombietime and HonestReporting criticism of reporter Suzanne Goldenberg’s coverage of the Red Cross ambulance incident. Mayes writes:
What the zombietime website, which takes issue with both of these Australian rebuttals, does show is a fairly large number of inconsistencies and anomalies in the reporting and pictorial coverage of the event across the media: whether these are larger in number than might normally be expected to occur in reporting from a war zone is a matter for conjecture. A Guardian picture archivist with a special interest in images from areas of conflict, who carried out extensive research for me, concluded that there was cause for doubt about the nature of the munitions involved and the manner of their delivery, but not in the reality of the attack. Suzanne Goldenberg told me: “I remain confident that the story was true.” She points out that she and Sean Smith reported the story first hand and independently and did not rely on what purported to be amateur video footage of the incident.
