Only problem is that Newsweek apologized and retracted the story. They were lies. Big difference. Irresponsible journalism. Typical that the libs jump all over it though. The NYT distracting the nation with 40+ Abu Ghrab front-pagers does nothing to help morale and frankly tarnishes the efforts of the good troops.
Yes, lies in journalism is very bad. BOTH liberals and conservatives would jump over stories that favor their side. It's not just one side doing that. The thing about Abu Gharib is that it IS a big deal. USA comes in as peacemakers and liberators, of course it WILL be big news if a scandal occurs.
/filter Yeah, it's a double plus for journalists to lie when it helps our troops and keeps the voters happy! No points for truth telling abuse stories. Boo!!! /end filter
Hey TJ. Freedom of the press is one of the founding principles this country was built upon. Love it or leave it.
You do not seem to mnd the lies fabricated by the GWB WH. Methinks partisan double standards are afoot. BTW Newsweek, if you had bother to actually read the article, had triple checked their facts. The person, who told them about the Koran-in-the-toilet incident, did not retract his statement in its entirity. He retracted that he is not sure where he read about it. Thus, he is sure that he read it but does not remember where. This is an order of magnitude more fact checking Newsweek et al do when reporting stuff like "Al Qaeda Number 3 Man Aprehended" where they just print the lies the WH spews.
they don't have freedom to make stuff up. they don't have freedom to play loose and fast with facts. the Constituion does NOT protect that...particularly when other people pay a cost for it. scream fire in a movie theater and see how far your right to free speech gets you. this is not an unabridged right.
Screaming fire in a theater while there is a fire in the theater is awhole 'nother matter, right? Newsweek did not make this story up.
at the very least, they played loose and fast with facts. they reported it as if it happened...as fact...without the qualifiers. they were less than responsible. i can't imagine why you're defending that when you call it out so often when it comes from the White House.
Did you have a problem with that story? Because you don't seem to have a problem with this story. Meagrees...
I do embrace the concept of freedom of the press, as I previously stated. The liberals are MORE THAN FREE to say positive things about the troops every now and then -- why don't they? When we are at war, it is necessary to be responsible with journalism. It is necessary to use discretion. Lying about flushing the Koran is not responsible. Killing Afghanis by enciting riots is not responsible. Helping to aid the enemy by distributing propaganda (which the liberals most certainly do), helps to kill US troops. Why do the liberals constantly attempt to distract the public's attention from the GOOD that the troops are doing by only focusing on the bad news? Do you realize the sacrifice these troops make for the cause? It's called respect, and many liberals just don't have it.
TJ makes a good point. I've bemoaned the media before. But when you talk to guys who have been over there, many come back talking about good things they're doing over there. Building schools..facilitating elections...life-changing type stuff, that has a profound effect on Iraqis as well as on the troops who are carrying it out. I see very little reported of that in the media, frankly. Very little. Maybe that's not the story. But after a couple of years over there, you'd think you'd see that angle hit from time to time, at least.
Journalism is dead. Investigative journalism is dead and buried. "The Media" is now split into partisan camps, and none of it is very believable any more, on either side. I've basically stopped reading the front page when I read the newspaper, be it the Houston Chronicle or the New York Times, which I still get on Sundays. If you are looking for the truth, you will be hard pressed to get it from a network, newspaper or "newsmagazine". You have to dig deeper nowadays to get past the partisan BS.
When the economy was booming during the Clinton administration, the Republicans didn't jump on every tiny bit of negative news and constantly bash the economy. Instead, they took credit for the good news! So why don't the Democrats try to take credit for some of the good happening in Iraq? After all, Bush has changed many things, including providing better armor for troops and agreeing to the elections earlier than he wanted.
Here is more Information. LInk Newsweek's Non-retraction Retraction by Bernhard Sun May 15th, 2005 at 16:22:01 PDT copied from Moon of Alabama Newsweek reported on May 9 about interrogators flushing a Qur'an down a toilet in Guantanamo Bay. This short report lead to deadly unrests in several countries and threats of a renewed jihad in Afghanistan. Today Newsweek did issue a follow up to the story. Some headlines now claim: Newsweek: Koran Story Untrue, Newsweek backtracks over Koran report and Editor admits Koran story in doubt and you can be sure to see many more like these tomorrow. But does the new Newsweek piece, How a Fire Broke Out, really retract the story? I do not think so and you should not either, so please read on. Diaries :: Bernhard's diary :: :: Trackback :: The article starts with a description of the current unrests and continues: Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them. How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? ... Up to this point there is no evidence in the article that Newsweek DID get the facts wrong. DiRita might say whatever he likes, the issues is still open - so why the above question I emphasized? Why at this point of the report? This reader listens up and asks: Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? [NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff] knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but NEWSWEEK National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?" The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the PERISCOPE draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report. The elder story is double-sourced but one of the sources, a 'senior Defense official', - sure about one detail - is now doubted to be sure of a second one? Because he did not deny it? Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell. Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? 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. So 'these concerns' surfaced in a different report? Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a b**** said. How could he be credible now?" (Can someone ask DiRita about today's credibility of those WMD-in-Iraq hypers in his department, including himself, - now that 'people are dead because of what these sons of a b****es said'?) But lets not get distracted: Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt--when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003--was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." Did Newsweek really get its facts wrong? Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. The article ends about there. The essence of the original Newsweek claim and a new aspect was: "There is an official U.S. report about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident". This claim still holds. The version number or draft title of the official U.S. report may have been wrong. But the essence of the story still holds. There must have been immense pressure on Newsweek to come up with some kind of retraction and they did it in an artful way. They do retract by non-retraction. The question: "How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong?" is a rhetoric question. The facts were not wrong, but some details are unknown. Indeed the central abuse claim gets rolled out in more details, with more incidents and more sources. In a sidekick towards the Pentagon the detail on General Miller's non-indictment, not reported the last time, is made public and DiRita gets exposed as the son of a b**** he is. Some headlines may now say 'Newsweek was wrong'. But when concerned Muslims will study the article, they will understand that in fact, Newsweek sticks to the original report and the additional reporting will add fuel to the fire. The pressure that obviously has been applied to Newsweek here, did not help on the real issue. The non-retraction retraction might calm some internal U.S. concerns. The Muslim world will see this as the confirmation that it is and it will act upon it in a appropriate way.
You actually have the nerve to talk about partisan double standards? You, who are the KING of partisan double standards? I've heard EVERYTHING now. Why is it so IMPORTANT to you for this story to be true? You are hanging on it tooth and nail as if your very life-philosophy/religion were on the line. Newsweek ran a story that they can't back up and it had terrible consequences. They should not have run the story. But you can't see that through your partisan double standards! You probably still belive that those Rather memos are real and anyday now the proof will arrive.
I think it might also have to do with which media people watch, read, or listen to. I know that NPR did another story like this over the weekend, and one about a week and a half ago, and several more before that. I had even posted one on this board. NPR has indepth stories about the good things the troops do all the time. They also talk with a variety of soldiers both in Iraq and after they've returned home, as well as their families, in order to give an insight as to how life for the soldier is. They go deeper than just superficial flag waving. I think that insight helps people be very supportive of the troops. But I'm not surprised that it doesn't receive a lion's share of the media attention. It is important to note that they are doing those things, and it should be reported. But is it still news when they keep on doing it? Sadly if folks keep doing bad things and it isn't getting fixed then that is still news.
i understand that...but there are TONS of members of the media there, each with a different story to tell every night. i would just expect to see more of these stories. i can't tell you the last time i saw any story that was even remotely positive out of Iraq. i didn't hear the NPR piece...i haven't listened to NPR since my commute shortened to 3 minutes. i guess i meant more of the mainstream media.
