Newsweek Retracts, But Seeks To Shift Blame Elsewhere

Sixteen deaths and dozens of anti-U.S. riots later, Newsweek's editors say they regret printing an inaccurate story that U.S. interrogators flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.
But it wasn't until late yesterday, after mounting criticism, that the magazine officially retracted the article, which was based on misinformation from an unnamed "senior U.S. government official."

Until then, Newsweek's editors pointedly refused to do so — saying, "we don't know what the ultimate facts are."

Now, apparently, they do. And the facts show that Newsweek was flat out wrong.

Yet even its latest statement falls short of an admission of bad faith: "Based on what we now know," it said, "we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

What weasel words.

Newsweek has come out with a retraction a few hours after claiming that it would not do so until they knew what the ultimate facts were. Here are a few ultimate facts to chew on:

~ Newsweek ran this story on the basis of one unidentified senior official.
~ Newsweek ran the story without confirmation of basic facts on the story by any other sources.
~ Newsweek now insists that it is not to blame for the riots that ensued across South Asia and Muslim controlled territories; that there were multiple causes.
~ Newsweek thinks that it can weather this storm by shifting blame off its shoddy reporting and onto other entities.
~ Newsweek ran the retraction only after the single source for the story came back and said that he/she could not confirm what they had originally stated. In other words, the source had no clue about what was originally stated, but Newsweek ran the story anyway.

Newsweek ran the story on the basis that it was supposedly newsworthy. Does Newsweek run a story of every single instance that a church is desecrated somewhere in the Middle East? No. It also doesn't include racial information on many stories about criminals out of worries that it might spur lynchings.

Then there's the media clampdown on showing imagery of 9/11. A conscious decision taken by the media to refrain from showing some of the more graphic imagery from that infamous day was made. No photos of people jumping from the towers. No video showing the towers collapsing. Why? Because the media didn't want to inflame the passions of Americans who might get pissed off because of what the terrorists did to our fellow citizens.

Yet, Newsweek didn't particularly care that they inflamed the passions of Muslims who might get more than a little offended at the mere suggestion that the Koran was desecrated. Where was the sensitivity in running this particular story?

At a minimum, a full review of the editorial process needs to be held, and those reponsible for greenlighting the story must be held accountable and fired. The same goes for the reporters who did the 'legwork' of getting a single source to make these outrageous claims.

Meanwhile, there is nothing that Newsweek can do to bring back the lives of those killed in the riots and nothing it can do to fix the US image in those regions affected by the riots. And, there's little the US can do to fix its image either- and little it can do to hold Newsweek accountable either.

What a fine mess Newsweek has made for itself, for the US, and for the world.