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News... weak?

Last week, Newsweek published an article "reporting: that, "sources tell Newsweek: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet." Soon after, riots broke out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza, and Indonesia, among other places. The White House and Army quickly apologized, insisting they would look into the allegations. But there was also a sense that the riots breaking out had more to do with political unrest that had already been plaguing Afghanistan than with Newsweek's allegations. Just this weekend, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, declared, "foreign hands are trying to disturb our parliamentary elections and are against the strengthening of the peace process."

The U.S. seemed to agree. According to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, the senior commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry thought that "the violence that we saw…was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran… [Eikenberry] thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine."

Yesterday, Newsweek issued an apology for its original article. "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst." Pentagon spokesmen jumped on the apology, attacking the credibility of Newsweek. White House spokesman Scott McClellan says, "It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story. The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged." Pentagon spokesperson Lawrence Di Rita offered, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said."

It's important, before we go jumping to conclusions that the media is completely without credibility, to identify exactly what Newsweek got wrong. Note: "On Saturday, Isikoff [author of the Newsweek article] 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." Moreover, Isikoff had shown the story to a senior Pentagon official, who did not dispute the Koran claim.

So here's the thing: Newsweek didn't publish anything incorrect. Sources did tell Newsweek that he recalled a Koran/toilet incident in the report. But it turns out that the source cannot be sure that the incident was in the SouthCom report. Note that the editor of Newsweek states that, "The source had been reliable in the past, and was in a position to know about the report he was describing." Also note that the Pentagon is still trying to find out if the allegations are true. According to General Myers, military investigators at Guantanamo "have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they cannot confirm yet [emphasis added] that there were ever the case of the toilet incident."

I'm still perplexed as to why Newsweek apologized. They did not print anything incorrect. Rather, they used a source that proved reliable in the past that turned out to not be able to peg his claim directly to one report, but still holds that the claim is true. And yet, in their May 23rd issue, Newsweek writes, "How did Newsweek get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest?" Give me a break. It's seems naïve at best, and ignorant at worst to think that Newsweek's allegations of interrogators desecrating the Koran single-handedly fomented the deaths and unrest throughout the Middle East. It's hardly the first time allegations of this kind have emerged. And we still have yet to hear the final word on whether or not they are true.

Not only is Newsweek bowing to pressures, the New York Times even used their story on the issue to shamelessly defend and one-up themselves: "Reader surveys have said that the use of unnamed officials is one of the biggest reasons their trust in the news media has eroded, and several news organizations, including The New York Times, have been tightening rules on the use of unnamed officials." Likewise the BBC covers the story with the headline, "Koran story brings US journalism crisis." They go on to discuss how the BBC has reassessed its journalistic practices of late. Good for them. But it still remains to be seen that Newsweek got it all wrong. So to all those jumping to conclusions, be it Newsweek themselves, Pentagon officials, or Muslim clerics threatening a holy war: let's just settle down for a minute. The jury is still out on this one.

Posted by on 05/16/05 at 3:59 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg this | de.licio.us

Comments

This whole situation is another example of how the Bush administration can create a media storm that shifts America's attention away from the true 'big' story. Why is there no nightly news coverage of the Downey Street memo? How is the Newsweek story a bigger story then the fact that we now see proof of the Bush administration lies to go to war in Iraq?
It is a sorry time when the media is controlled by the government, glad we live in a free society.

Posted by: Wconner on 05/16/05 at 6:03 PM

The reason why Newsweek got into this mess is because they used an anonymous source. While this is not always a cause for concern, it is the root of a majority of the problems with media credibility today. Just think - an anonymous source with an agenda can leak some info to a reporter with the hopes of gauging how that agenda would play in the public forum. Anonymous sources should be avoided at all costs. "Newsweek" was right in apologizing. While they did not print anything "incorrect (as you say)," they should NEVER have relied on an anonymous source to predict how government actions will play out.

Posted by: AM De Ziel Vehling on 05/17/05 at 5:23 AM

Onnesha:

If anything you are being far too generous to the Bush administration.

Here's what the Pentagon actually claimed:
“They cannot confirm yet that there was ever the case of the toilet incident except in one case, a log entry that they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Quran and putting them in a toilet to stop it up as a protest,” said General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

First, if the incident occured–that of an interrogator tormenting a detainee by desecrating the Quran, do any of us really believe that incident would be truthfully and accurately recorded in the interrogation logs? Were the incidents at Abu Ghraib, for instance, so recorded?

In practical terms, the statement of General Richard Myers amounts to this: if no official record exists the incident never officially happened until and unless officially established otherwise.

Second, Myers confirms that an incident of desecration was recorded though he blames the detainee. (Since, of course, that is what the official record seems to show).

We’ll ignore the fact that the Quran is the detainee’s sole book and one of his few possessions. (For the conditions at GITMO: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1766037.stm). But consider this: If the detainee were to desecrate the Quran as Myers describes, the detainee would be subjected to severe reprisal by his cellmate (again, two to a cage) to start and every and any other detainee thereafter. Remember: these men were religious militants.

Likewise, if at all possible, the cellmate (cagemate?) would have tried to prevent the detainee from desecrating the Quran. That scuffle, certainly, should have made the GITMO logs.

What does the Myers scenario require us to believe for it to be true?

To commit this act of desecration under heavily monitored conditions with limited opportunities, the detainee would have to (a) violate some of his most deeply held beliefs while (b) putting himself at the risk of violent reprisal leading to harm or death for (c) no apparent benefit.

This quite frankly asks a lot. It asks too much of the he good folks that I know from my time the Middle East.

How does the General Richard Myers explanation play with them? Try this:

1. That the Quran was desecrated (again, Myers confirms this).
2. And to add insult to injury to insult,
* the detainee was blamed for what he would clearly never would have done
* and the Army officially tried to cover up the incident.

Consider these other incidents: http://hrw.org/reports/2004/afghanistan0304/ | http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

The Whitehouse-forced retraction makes this worse. It caters to the worst Islamic conspiracy fantasies about how the US media is controlled by the government on behalf on Zionist interests. It is, in other words, exactly what Osama bin Laden would have predicted that George W. Bush would do.

We needed a full and independent investigation. We got instead a crackdown on media. Bush and Co. validated the extremists who were exploiting this incident.

Finally, for what it's worth, I've blogged some more details here: http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=114

Posted by: ThomH on 05/17/05 at 9:30 AM

Pioneering screenwriter Nigel Kneale, best known for the Quatermass TV serials and films, dies aged 84...

Posted by: Micah Beebe on 11/27/06 at 4:56 PM