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This story about mainstream media is surely the most appalling in many years. This is far beyond anything Jayson Blair did. This resulted in serious harm to many people and to the United States.
WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) – The White House said on Monday that a Newsweek report based on an anonymous source had damaged the U.S. image overseas by alleging that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay.
The May 9 report triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 16 people were killed.
Newsweek’s editor, Mark Whitaker, apologized to the victims on Sunday and said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
“It’s puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. “I think there’s a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not.”
The report sparked violent protests across the Muslim world—from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, Indonesia and Gaza. In the past week the reported desecration was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
MSM has departed so far from reality, and has become so obsessed—for no reason—with making the U.S. look bad, that in this case great harm was done, without any possible excuses regarding the public’s “right to know.” The story was false.
I would like to suggest that even if it were true, it would still have been a great error for Newsweek to print it. It’s a triviality. We wouldn’t care if the Bible had been treated in a similar way. Yet printing the story led to terrible harm to Muslims and to America. Newsweek was wrong to print the story even when they thought it was true.
Also, a comment from Andrew Sullivan:
"But I think it's telling that some bloggers have devoted much, much more energy to covering the Newsweek error than they ever have to covering any sliver of the widespread evidence of detainee abuse that made the Newsweek piece credible in the first place. A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag, after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, after they have told one detainee to \"#### Allah," after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head, is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran? Yes, Newsweek bears complete responsibility for any errors it has made; and, depending on what we now find, should not be let off the hook. But the outrage from the White House is beyond belief. It seems to me particularly worrying if this incident further intimidates the press from seeking the truth about what the government is doing in the war on terror. It is not being "basically, on the side of the enemy," as Glenn Reynolds calls it, to resist the notion of government-sanctioned torture and to report on it. It is patriotism and serving the cause that this war is about: religious pluralism and tolerance. The media's Abu Ghraib?? When Mike Isikoff is found guilty of committing murder, give me a call. Austin Bay still insists that Abu Ghraib did not constitute "deadly torture." The corpses found there (photographed by grinning U.S. soldiers) would probably disagree. (Will Bay correct?) Three factors interacted here: media error/bias, Islamist paranoia, and a past and possibly current policy of religiously-intolerant torture. No one comes out looking good. But it seems to me unquestionable that the documented abuse of religion in interrogation practices is by far the biggest scandal. Too bad the blogosphere is too media-obsessed and self-congratulatory to notice."
Newsweek's biggest sin was relying on an anonoymous source, something that is being overused and misused by MSM. When the government source refused to be quoted on record on such a sensitive issue, the Newsweek reporters should have reconsidered doing the story.
On the other hand, the reality was that nobody in the US anticipated such a violent reaction to the Newsweek piece. The CBS Abu Ghraib leak didn't lead to mass violence, and graphic prisoner abuse details in former Gitmo translator Erik Saar's book haven't sparked riots. For the Pentagon to say " I told you so" 11 days after the story was published borders on the absurd. It's not likely Newsweek intentionally harmed US interests abroad. Nevertheless, its story was a factor in the Afghan protests.
#4The rioting in Afghanistan shows that many people there are easy to stir up to the point of doing a great deal of harm to themselves over nothing. Newsweek should be aware of that and should balance that in the future against the news value of a story. In this case I think they were wrong to print a story the meaning of which (even if it had been true) was far outweighed by the damage caused by the rioting it provoked. We're far more civilized and educated than they are, and we have a responsibility not to print unimportant stories that are likely to cause them to riot and do harm to themselves.
I completely disagree with your last sentence. I am not apologizing for Newsweek, whose editors should be ASHAMED of themselves for letting this through.
However, the whole point of a news media is to print what they believe to be the truth, no matter how unpopular or contrary to the goverment's wishes.