Feral Jundi

Marc Peltier, MEP’s chief operating officer, said in an interview with ABC News that he had “no reports from the field” of translators who could not communicate in Dari or Pashto, and said the company has received “100 percent outstanding” ratings from the Army and shared a copy of what he said was an internal company survey that showed 82 percent of its customers were satisfied with the performance of its translators. An attorney accompanying Peltier to the interview said the company would answer Funk’s allegations in court, and not in the media.

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     I am not going to comment too much about the case between Mr. Funk and MEP, because I really don’t know enough about it. What I will comment on though is how ABC News decided to attack this company in such an obvious way. I would be cheering on this news broadcast if in fact their stuff was true or unbiased, but there are too many details that we are not privy too. I just cannot see how this mainstream media outlet thought that this was appropriate? It is more bashing of companies for the sake of ratings I guess?

     The show was completely one sided and the viewer is made to think that the translator in the film they showed from Afghanistan was one of MEP’s translators. This was not the case after reading MEP’s statement, and I was shocked. Who is ABC News for misleading the viewer, and especially when there were so many variables with this case?

     Also, I despise the idea of poor translators going out into the field like anyone else. I have witnessed exactly what poor translation services can produce. But really, if the government has identified poor service by MEP and they were not at all satisfied with the translators performance, then they should have reflected that in the customer surveys and reviews. Or better yet, they should have fired MEP and went with a better company. It makes no sense to keep paying for poor services, if in fact you are getting poor service. It’s called exercising your power as the consumer and the government does a terrible job of this. –Matt

Edit: 09/14/2010- Check out David Isenberg’s excellent post about the subject here.  He didn’t have much good to say about ABC’s track record on reporting and he pointed out many holes in this case.

Edit: 09/23/2010- The American Spectator did a story on this recently.

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Mission Essential Personnel Response To ABC’s 9/8/2010 Broadcast

9/8/2010

Mission Essential Personnel today released the following statement in response to the ABC News story “Whistleblower Claims Many U.S. Interpreters Can’t Speak Afghan Languages.”

MEP is an American success story and a responsible partner to the U.S. Government and to service members around the world. Our linguists play a critical role in sharing the United States’ message of goodwill and deciphering the hidden messages of those who seek to harm Americans. MEP’s linguists risk their lives each day to accompany brave troops into the field, and many have made the ultimate sacrifice to advance the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, while saving many lives. While there are always challenges on a changing battlefield, MEP, in partnership with the U.S. military, has helped bring a greater level of peace and stability to Afghanistan.