Pirc1 - check the date on your info. It's OLD. Your story is from the 15th. The retraction came out yesterday the 16th.... OOPS
Its almost amusing (more like pathetic) the way No Worries seems pretty angry that newsweek has retracted the story as if he is desperately hoping the story is actually true. A story that puts Americans in danger, hurts America's image around the world. Like I said PATHETIC.
All this handwringing about the Newsweek story might be a little less ridiculous if it didn't come from an Administration and its supporters that set the gold standard for relying on unreliable sources and then refusing to accept responsibility. From ThinkProgress- Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lectured the media about a “journalistic standard that should be met” before running with a story. Fine, but isn’t there also a political standard of accountability that should be met as well? McClellan’s issue with the Newsweek story was that it was “based on a single anonymous source who cannot personally substantiate the report.” Remember when we learned that the evidence for Iraq’s supposed mobile biological weapons labs came from an unrel iable source? What was McClellan’s response then? QUESTION: Does it concern the President that the primary source for the intelligence on the mobile biological weapons labs was a guy that U.S. intelligence never every interviewed? MCCLELLAN: Well, again, all these issues will be looked at as part of a broad review by the independent commission that the President appointed… But it’s important that we look at what we learn on the ground and compare that with what we believed prior to going into Iraq. [White House Press Gaggle, 4/5/04] There you have it. When confronted with an anonymous source who provided faulty intelligence that the President relied upon to go to war, McClellan chose not to talk about standards of accountability that should be met. Instead, the White House passed the buck to an independent commission and suggested that it didn’t matter what subsequent information they learned about Iraq’s intelligence because they didn’t know it when they went to war. Newsweek has taken responsibility by retracting its story. Will President Bush take responsibility for his own errors? QUESTION: He’s the president of the United States. This thing he told the country on the verge of taking the nation to war has turned out to be, by your own account, not reliable. That’s his fault, isn’t it? MCCLELLAN: No. [White House Press Briefing, 7/17/03] http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=892
two sides to that coin...the dismissal of concern about this "story" might be a little less ridiculous if it didn't come from people who were constantly badgering the administration about being truthful and forthright.
Honestly, I guess I missed it, but Newsweek has NOT made an "official" retraction of the story---some one care to elucidate? Yesterday morning, NPR had the Newsweek editor on and he made it clear that Newsweek was absolutely NOT making a retraction, just an apology for sources that they thought were 100% spot-on. This is an honest question, what is the "real" difference between a retraction and an apology as they relate to the press?
Slow down. Part of me can't help but appreciate the irony of a White House which took the country to war on shaky (and later discredited) evidence going to war against a news organization that published a short article on shaky evidence. But set that aside. I haven't followed every particular about the case of this blow-up over the article in Newsweek. But I do see a clear pattern -- a White House trying to decapitate another news organization. The parallels with CBS are obvious. And yet, the production of the Rather/National Guard piece ended up containing egregious errors. On top of that, CBS dug in its heels for days even after manifest errors in the reporting had become obvious. CBS brought the Rather-gate avalanche down upon itself with some very sloppy journalism. But the White House quickly saw the opportunity and grabbed it, effectively taming an entire news organization. What already seems to be happening here is that the White House is trying to replicate the pattern, even in a case with a quite different set of facts. What I do see is a pattern of a White House focusing in on particular instances of vulnerable reporting and exploiting them to set new de facto rules for the national political press. Here we have today Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, specifically demanding further disavowals of the story from Newsweek. That should trouble anyone. The White House is not a party at interest here. Perhaps the people who have been falsely accused are. Perhaps the Pentagon could demand an apology if the story turns out to be false. Or the Army. Not the White House. They are only involved here in as much as the story is bad for them politically. We are already seeing a wave of violence, at least some of which preceded the publication of this article, being blamed on the reporters in question here. That is a vivid reminder of the responsibility all journalists have to get stories right. At the end of the day, though, the responsibility for the deaths of those who were killed rests with those who killed them, nowhere else. (As Andrew Sullivan rightly notes, in terms of severity it is actually not that easy to distinguish between this alleged conduct and lots of stuff we know for a fact did happen at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and other places.) At the risk of stating the obvious, I'm not justifying the work behind this story. I have no particular brief for Mike Isikoff or Newsweek. Indeed, it's not clear to me precisely what happened at all. What I am saying is that occasional errors are inevitable with a truly free press. The price paid by the news organization and the individual journalist should be based on whether and how well they followed established journalistic practices -- not on how much the White House went after them. If the new standard is that every material fact reported must be attested to on the record then in the future we'll know only a tiny fraction of what we do now about the internal workings of our government. What I see here is an effort by the White House to set an entirely different standard when it comes to reportage that in any way reflects critically on the White House. That's dangerous and it should be recognized as such. -- Josh Marshall
mc mark -- come on. every material fact??? please. whether or not we flushed Korans down toilets had HUGE implications, and they knew that. playing loose and fast with that story is unacceptable. reporting it as fact without the disclaimers is ridiculous.
max I agree and to an extent Newsweek has only itself to blame. And I won;t try and defend them. But I do find it curious the way the WH has turned the story to their favor. That's all.
understood. i'm not saying for sure this did not happen. i'm saying you can't report it as an out and out fact unless you're damn sure it happened...absent some qualifier.
Triple checking the story wasn't good enough? Due diligence was not performed? This just in. Fox News is reporting that Iraq WMD has been located.
RETRACTION http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/17/newsweek.quran/index.html This is like the 3rd time I've had to post this for the liberals in denial.
I think that this is a higher standard than is used by any news organizaton. What more could anyone reasonably expect Newsweek to do wrt verifying this story? As of just before their official retraction, Newsweek was saying that their anonymous source was sticking to the key point of his story. There is also the 11 or so days from asking for Pentagon feedback and publishing the story. The Pentagon had time to right this wrong, if they saw fit. Does the "absense of malice" legal standard also apply? Despite what the right wing but on this board say, I don't see Newsweek purposely targeting the conservatives as a part of their liberal agenda.
WH wants this to be The News for today. They got lots of miles out of it yesterday and probably some more today. Any bets that this will be the WH's story tomorrow, seeing if they can punish Newsweek as bad as they did CBS? I have little doubts that the WH is sending a message tto the press corps"You are either with us or against", with those against paying a very high price. White House Urges Newsweek to Do More May 17, 10:24 AM (ET) By TERENCE HUNT WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House says Newsweek took a "good first step" by retracting its story that U.S. investigators found evidence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran, but it wants the magazine to do more to repair damage caused by the article. ... McClellan said a retraction was only "a good first step" and said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military." Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, said Tuesday in an interview on CBS'"The Early Show" that the magazine will "continue to look at how we put together this story, learn from mistakes that we've made and make improvements that are appropriate as we go along." Asked if anyone involved in preparing the article would lose his job, Klaidman said, "We think that people acted responsibly and professionally and ... there was no malice, no institutional bias, just a mistake that was made in good faith." The article was written by Michael Isikoff, an investigative reporter, and John Barry, a national security correspondent for the magazine. ... Whitaker said the magazine's original source later said he could not be sure he had read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited and that it might have been in another document. "Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Whitaker said. The Newsweek report was not the first public airing of allegations about U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay desecrating a Quran. In August and October 2004 there were news reports based on a lawsuit and a written report by British citizens who had been released from the prison in Cuba. They claimed abuse by U.S. guards, including throwing their Qurans into the toilet. In January, Kristine Huskey, a lawyer representing Kuwaitis detained at Guantanamo, said they claimed to have been abused and in one case a detainee watched a guard throw a Quran into a toilet.
It is bizarre that the WH can spin this to the good. Sort of like how Kerry's military service somehow became a liability in the election. True masters of spin.
The WH is making itself into The Great Defenders of Accountability of others that is. The conservative MSM is eating it up.
Pakistan dismisses Newsweek retraction on Koran http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/religion_pakistan_koran_dc
Not realy because he keeps on saying liberals when its clear he means media. Its not like Fox news or any other rightward leaning news sources didn't report the Abu Graib situation or that Air America didn't report the Iraqi elections. As I said earlier I think its a misperception that the media isn't reporting good stories out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I would say the Abu Ghraib trials going on right now is a good story since it shows US accountability. The difference is that good stories aren't going to get as much coverage or stir as much debate as bad or controversial stories. While that's a problem for the media that's more a problem with society in general and is reflected in practically every news service from your local TV station to CNN. If it bleeds it leads. Same thing with attention being paid on discussion boards like this. We're not going to debate a story about US troops opening a hospital. That's great news but not one that we're going to have a passionate debate about. I remember posting a thread about the success of the Afghan elections that got maybe 3 replies. We're here because we like debating controversial issues not to be a mutual admiration society.
