May 15, 2005
Bush Newsweek Lied - People Died (Updated)
Good grief. Newsweek magazine, in just another pathetic attempt to discredit our administration, went too far this time. It published a false report about actions of U.S. military investigators causing riots in the Muslim world resulting in 16 deaths and more than 100 injuries. But, everything is okay. Once its mistake was pointed out, Newsweek's editor said that he was sorry--well, sort of.
Here is a link to the ARTICLE just released Sunday night, and this is how it begins:
By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article. Editor Mark Whitaker 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.The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. In the past week it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.
On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
Oh yeah, I didn't mention that this also created calls for a holy war against our country. That, too.
But, the "Newsweak" editor went on to say:
We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either.
Judging from that, we can now presume that Dan Rather is helping Newsweek with its damage control. At least when Dan Rather fabricated tales, the only thing that died was his career and CBS News.
For additional information, here is another just released story on this matter: REPORT
Newsweek was very irresponsible and people died as a result. Furthermore, it stirred up more hate against the U.S. Retractions and apologies won't correct that damage. It's like trying to get back feathers scattered in the wind.
Also, don't expect the editor of Newsweek to attend any services for those who died--as was demanded of the President for our soldiers killed in action. That demand was just posturing for them.
And, don't expect a change in the way the media handles reports against this administration and our country in the future. It's more important for them to be the first with the stories than to take the time to get them right--especially if the news hurts the administration and insults our nation. The phony sophisticates of the media just don't think that the U.S. is a good world citizen (according to its definition,) and they want everyone to know.
I have often criticized the mass media in this country for its lack of professionalism and ethics. For that, I have heard outcries that my views were wrong and that the media is just doing its job when it is aggressive against those in power. Well, fine. Do you job, but get it right and get it right the first time. Oh yeah...when a national Code of Ethics is developed to guide journalists, will someone let me know--and let them know, too.
Now that would be news.
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UPDATE - New Survey Finds Huge Gap Between Press and Public on Many Issues
How timely. An article in "Editor & Publisher," covering the newspaper industry, reviews this SURVEY:
•Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news. • More than 7 in 10 journalists believe the media does a good or excellent job on accuracy--but only 4 in 10 among the public feel that way. • 53% of the public think stories with unnamed sources should not be published at all. • Asked who they voted for in the past election, the journalists reported picking Kerry over Bush by 68% to 25%. • 75% (of journalists) say bloggers are not real journalists because they don't adhere to "commonly held ethical standards."
I especially like that last finding. Do 75% of journalists adhere to "commonly held ethical standards" themselves? What are"commonly held ethical standards" for the media. Is that like selective morality?
Hey, I report. You decide.
Posted by GM Roper at May 15, 2005 09:00 PM | TrackBack1) Newsweek is a mainstream capitalist magazine, no?
I don't really see the big deal, they have been pretty slow on reporting about the torture at Guantanamo or continuing pretty intensively in Iraq. And my suspicion is that as with most of these angry riots there is usually more at work than simply flushed Korans. The corporate media that conservatives malign so go out of their way to avoid much in the way of serious reportage on the fiefdoms and chaos that remains in Afghanistan today.
Posted by steve at May 15, 2005 11:05 PM
One other comment, pardon my frequency,This is going to be interesting to see how conservatives use this to trash the 'liberal' media, since Iskioff is a guy who skewered Michael Moore's 911.
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steve, I'm really more concerned with "what" the media does rather than the "why" it does them. Putting liberal tags aside, I think the media should be accurate and it should be reponsible--neither of which seems to be the case here. The sloppiness and laziness of the press, without the bias, is enough to discredit their credibility. I used the word laziness with thought, because I think that reporters are too lazy to get good stories, so they take what they can without adequate checking or embellish for sensationlism that doesn't really exist. This was the case with Jason Blair of the NY Times. (Dan Rather was just 'rather biasd.") In looking up Blair, by chance I found this article in Slate from 2003 that supports my beliefs. You may want to look at it. http://slate.msn.com/id/2082741/
Here's a little bit of what it says. Keep in mind that this is two years old.
"Last week, New York Times reporter Jayson Blair joined Janet Cooke, formerly of the Washington Post, the New Republic's Stephen Glass, the Boston Globe's Patricia Smith, and Jay Forman in Slate as journalists who got caught embellishing, exaggerating, and outright lying in print. The will to fabricate cuts across disciplines, with academics and scientists inventing data, too. Last year, Emory University history professor Michael A. Bellesiles resigned following an investigation of charges that he concocted evidence to support his book Arming America, and Bell Labs fired researcher Jan Hendrik Schon when it discovered he made up scientific data and published it.
No single explanation can cover every case, but my guess is that most liars make things up for the simple reason that they don't have the talent or the ability to get the story any other way."
Woody
Posted by steve at May 15, 2005 11:57 PM
Yes, Woody, Rather is 'biased', he's a very biased person who strongly supports American capitalism, so?
I mean gosh, who was it that did a great marketing campaign for Reagan's [and before him Carter]'s support for the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan during the 1980's? It's not bias that brought down Rather, but the usual corporate media drive for a 'smoking gun', profit, profit, profit [i.e. his embrace of capitalism] drives that, no? Had he done as the Boston Globe did, he could have done a much more solid job cracking away at Bush's Alabama stories, etc. and never been touched by the bloggers of the world. The attack on him was brilliant precisely because it detracted from the Boston Globe series and numerous other well done investigative journalism pieces on that matter.
The lying though, I mean is pretty minor league. To begin with, what is being lied about here, if we are to believe the Pentagon [and God knows there's enough lying and distortion of reality there to last a million lifetimes]? The Koran business gives a great excuse to inflame, ok, fair [if indeed untrue, Heavens really knows and how could we ever really know anyhow unless someone blows the whistle?]. But was that really the cause of the riots? There's no other anger that explains the riots, just some article by Iskioff? Not terribly likely.
Blair and even Iskioff are amateurs though, I would prefer to argue. Judith Miller makes them look like little children in their ability to both lie and cause death at the same time. We live in an upside down world.
Posted by steve at May 16, 2005 12:40 AM
For me, I want timeliness and accuracy in news reporting and, increasingly, I find both missing in printed news sources. Or, at least, they cannot seem to do one without sacrificing the other.
As for Newsweek and the "flushed Koran" story - they own culpability for publishing a story they didn't know was correct (as opposed to publishing one that they knew to be incorrect), but they are not responsible for the riots and the deaths in the Middle East that resulted. The rioters and the murderers are responsible.
Rioting and Murdering because of a story of a book being flushed? What sort of twisted culture thinks that is ok?
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too many steves, their culture is what it is, and Newsweek knows what it is. I heard a comment this morning comparing what the magazine did to "yelling fire in a crowded theater." I thought about that and realized that, while it may not be the same in a legal context, the consequences are the same. Any individual or any publication with any sense knows what shouting a false alarm can do; and, Newsweek knew, and possibly hoped, for a "mass rush for the exit door from our mideast policy." The only thing is that it caused a rush in the entire cineplex and people got killed.
Woody
Posted by too many steves at May 16, 2005 05:36 AM
I agree with 2-many. When I read a news article, I expect factual information. If I want opinion, or if I expect to see bias, then it should be in a commentary. But there is another problem displayed by Newsweek -- an apology does not reverse the horrific aftermath of what they published. You can’t bring dead people back to life with, “Sorry,†or “Oops, my bad,†(whatever the hell that means). The event, as tragic as it was, allows us to observe what modern-day journalism is all about. Meet that deadline, and for gosh-sakes, let’s get that story to press even when we aren’t sure of our sources of information. The bottom line is that Newsweek’s apology means absolutely nothing; they need to be held accountable  a concept without meaning at Newsweek, along with “standards in reporting.â€Â
One more observation, if I may. The Muslim world might not have reacted violently to Newsweek’s disinformation had there not been an Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Now, Muslims are ready to believe anything about the U. S. Military, and this illustrates that the event has had serious long-term consequences.
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Good points. One other thing, most Muslims who heard and were outraged by the accusations will not hear the correction, so they will continue to believe the worst about our country and hate us even more (if that's possible.)
Woody
Posted by Mustang at May 16, 2005 09:21 AM
Juan Cole points out that the source of the quote has actually never denied having seen what he said he saw, in which case the 'apology' sounds like a case of the corporate media giving into Pentagon fueled anger to detract from the real anger that exists in the real world of Afghanistan at the American treatment of detainees in Camp Xray.
"The Pentagon has claimed that the incident did not occur. Although the corporate media are now reporting that Newsweek had "backed off" the report, that isn't true.
Newsweek explains that in response to Pentagon queries,
"On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report."
Isikoff's source, in other words, stands by his report of the incident, but is merely tracing it to other paperwork. What difference does that make? Although Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita angrily denounced the source as no longer credible, in the real world you can't just get rid of a witness because the person made a minor mistake with regard to a text citation. It is like saying that we can't be sure someone has really read the Gospels because he said he read about Caiaphas in the Gospel of Mark rather than in the Gospel of John.
Newsweek has, in other words, confirmed that the source did read a US government account of the desecration of the Koran."
http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantanamo-controversies-bible-and.html
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steve, that's a very, very weak source for something that has caused such serious ramifications. Newsweek should have left it alone, just like they did with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that the magazine spiked in 1998 when it had solid evidence. ( http://www.drudgereport.com/ml.htm ). Any double standard, here?
Newsweek went ahead with this story because it wanted it to be true. After all, isn't the U.S. evil and always wrong? There was nothing to be accomplished with that disclosure except an attempted undermining of our foreign policy--and, that was done at the expense of the credibility of the media.
Okay, I have to earn a living, too; so, we can go at this more later. Thanks for your comment.
Woody
Posted by steve at May 16, 2005 09:50 AM
What is missing here is that while such garbage might be acceptable in the "court of public opinion," it would not be allowed in a court of justice. The source is "offering testimony" on a report he read, prepared by someone else. So at least there are these issues that need to be resolved, "Did he read the report correctly, was his memory of what he read accurate, and is the person who wrote the report credible?"
I don't know about the toilets at GITMO, but I can tell you that my own devices experience problems handling Q-tips, let alone pages from a book; Roto-rooter would be at my house for hours unsorting such a mess . . . so is it even likely that someone flushed the Koran?
All that aside, there really are "too many" problems at GITMO, and someone needs to square that place away. As we can see from this incident, even perceptions have dangerous consequences.
Okay, Woody. I'm done.
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Don't be done. You're doing a good job, and you're right. Many public restrooms have signs about not flushing disposables because they will cause blockage. The military investigators would have had to use those bio-degradable Korans.
Woody
Posted by Mustang at May 16, 2005 10:27 AM
Woody, You can't be serious with the idea that Newsweek believes the US to be evil. NW is a leading capitalist organ of information dissemination, it completely believes in the fundamental ideologies of capitalism every bit as much as you or Adam Smith [RIP].
Posted by steve at May 16, 2005 10:37 AM
Just a clarification: I'm not saying Newsweek shouldn't be held accountable for their error, but regardless of their motivations (which appear to be of the omission rather than commission variety) I cannot hold them responsible for the fact that some disturbed individuals chose to riot and murder based on the now discredited story.
Protest, demonstrations, marches down streets, loud and nasty yelling - sure - but riots and murder? Nope, not buying it.
Posted by too many steves at May 16, 2005 12:58 PM
Wait, 2MS. I agree that the editor at Newsweek didn’t sit down at the conference table, and lean across at his junior editor and say, “Let’s see how many people we can kill with this one!†So it was an error of omission, to be sure. At the same time, having been an editor, I know that it is a common practice to consider the consequences of any pre-published work. How will the White House react to this? What will Rumsfeld say? What changes can we expect in the relationship between the military and the press at GITMO if we say this, or that. If these discussions are not taking place at Newsweek, then the editor it a nitwit.
If you agree, then should there not have also been some intellectual discourse, knowing the middle east the way we do, about the likely reaction of the Muslim world by making a claim that, at best, is of questionable veracity? Common sense, if not a sense of decency, should dictate that it would be better to err on the side of caution, even if having to hold the story over for one additional week. Human beings died . . . unintended or not, that is a high price to pay for an “oops.â€Â
Posted by Mustang at May 16, 2005 02:02 PM
Woody, did you see this?
From Rev. Moon's Washington Times, May 13:
Gen. Myers said senior U.S. military officials in Afghanistan reported that the violence was "not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran but more tied up in the political process" involving actions by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Army Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thought one of the demonstrations, which occurred in Jalalabad about 80 miles east of Kabul, "was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," Gen. Myers said.
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Well, now that we know this, Newsweek can issue a full retraction of its partial retraction of its weak apology for something that it didn't fully believe was wrong and now turns out to be someone else's fault, anyway. So as they say--"no harm, no foul." Now, why couldn't Rev. Moon have written something to cover for Dan Rather?
Woody
Posted by steve at May 17, 2005 11:00 AM
Mustang: Let me just think out loud here for a bit.
I do largely agree with you, especially when the report is, as this Newsweek one turned out to be, incorrect. And I think those that made the decision to publish the story should be punished. I have no idea what sort of punishment is appropriate though.
But what if the story were true? Are there valid reasons to withhold the story? Because of concern that some in the Middle East might react violently? But isn't there value in knowing about this? Doing such a thing with the Quran is a violation of specific United States policy. Shouldn't we know this happened, regardless of how we think some zealots might react?
There was quite a lot of news about 9/11 that the MSM chose not to air/print. Their purpose in doing so had to do with showing respect to the families of victims AND to avoid inflaming Americans any more than they were already. I agree with the former, am bothered by the latter.
Should the press have not reported on the verdict handed down in the case against the police in the Rodney King incident? That resulted in massive riots and, if I remember correctly, deaths in the LA area?
So, I agree that Newsweek should be punished somehow. Maybe they are responsible, in a negligent way, for what happened as a result of their erroneous reporting and should be held accountable to the victims of their mistake. But I'm no lawyer, so I don't know.
I just think that it is the responsibility of the Press to report the facts as they find them. They shouldn't be worried that President Bush will be mad at them, or that Scott McClellan will reduce his time with them, or that some crazy people will react violently to the news.
But it is also their responsibility to get it right and to have no other motivation than to report the news dispassionately, accurately, and in a timely fashion.
Am I expecting too much?
Posted by too many steves at May 17, 2005 02:26 PM
" Now, why couldn't Rev. Moon have written something to cover for Dan Rather?"
uhm, Woody, surely you know that Moon is a rightwinger and a strong Bush supporter? That quote just happened upon a rightwing moonie owned newspaper. I think actually Newsweek should have stood its ground, unless the Pentagon had some evidence that it had in fact 'caused' the riots or 'led to deaths'. That Newsweek came out so quickly with an unnecessary retraction, 'apology' only goes to show how much the corporate media is supportive of American foreign policy, and more or less only critical of the 'how is it done' issues instead of 'should it be done at all and why is it done' issue. But then again, how could a corporate media be anything but very strongly supportive of American capitalism?
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You say to-ma-to, I say to-mah-to....
steve, I really don't know very much about Rev. Moon, but there is a minister up the road from my house named Pastor Dollar, and when it comes to raising money he does shoot for the moon. Is there a connection? Years and years ago I remember the "moonies" as being, in my humble opinion, a little in left field. So, I don't know if Rev. Moon's support for Bush is like Lyndon LaRouche's support for the Democrats.
With all due respect to you, steve, we see the same things but somehow interpret them quite differently. I could find a leftist plot in the roly-poly book that you read to your son (there is one, you know) and you somehow see a right-wing conspiracy, to borrow a phrase, in media attacks and other things. The only fair way to resolve this tie is to ask GM to cast a deciding vote.
Woody
Posted by steve at May 17, 2005 03:33 PM
No, no plot whatsoever Woody, I don't buy into conspiracy theory. But Moon's ties to the dems is far more developed than Larouche, who is just a fascist with no interest in the Democratic Party's agendas. Moon is *very* supportive of the Republican agendas domestically and abroad [and always has been].
I was just pointing out to you that the Moonie paper is actually a rightwing source. I would say their reporting of the Meyers quote reflects as little as Newsweek choosing to report the unnamed official's quote. I don't really see anything political about the choice on the part of Moon's newspaper to report that quote, certainly.
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Okay. I'll buy what you say. (The world just stopped.)
I suspect that this is an exception for a conservative publication to say that there is some gray area to cover for Newsweek. However, there probably really is and it doesn't seem entirely cut-and-dried--but, that doesn't absolve Newsweek of making a mistake and being stupid in trying to explain it like Dan Rather.
Thanks for keeping me on my toes, but can I say that my opinion must be correct even if the publications turn out to be false--which I can't prove either way. (I'm practicing to be a journalist with wording like that.)
Woody
Posted by steve at May 17, 2005 07:19 PM
I'm always correct, all the more so when I'm wrong.
Posted by steve at May 17, 2005 08:56 PM
Don't you really think that some interrogator in Guantanamo threw the Koran (Quran?) into the toilet? I'll bet some of them stick the ragheads head in the toilet. And since when do you get all weepy over some muslim killing another muslim? If Newsweek caused the ragheads to riot against themselves, why isn't the muslim clergy protesting against the rioting? They could issue a fatwa and that would be that. Why should you get all worked up about it?
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Proof of something is more important than what I might believe happened. Newsweek took the opposite view and paid for it. I don't like it anytime people are killed needlessly or by acting in ignorance.
Woody
Posted by James S Melbert at May 21, 2005 04:40 PM
