Jesus fucking Christ.
Nice one, Newsweek.
Yuri, what is the proper reply to something as stupid as “you liberals like the Koran more than people?”
- Boy, Newsweek is going to eat it for this.
- Newsweek will of course be scapegoated for this, but note that if all it takes is one report to get riots started maybe they’re a bit touchy, no? Doesn’t change the larger point.
We will now watch the right-wingers in this country demand more accountability from Newsweek than our own government. They’ll shrilly scream about liberal bias in the media that indirectly led to 15 deaths while casually dismissing numerous errors of judgement on the Bush administration’s part that have directly resulted in 1,600 dead Americans and 10s of thousands of dead Iraqis.
“scapegoated”, eh? So they’re blameless in your moonbat land.
It’s an opportunity to demand censorship for an increasingly compliant media.
You mean it’s just the latest example of how the left-wing media is negligent and is allowing its political bias to stand in the way of good reporting, and abetting our enemies at a time of war.
That’s a pretty big stretch of the “abetting enemies” term. And we’re not at war in the traditional sense, either. And freedom of speech is the most important freedom we have.
Newsweek will lose credibility over this, and that’s the appropriate punishment, I think. I don’t think Newsweek can be blamed for the riots, do you, Stefan?
I’ll go out on a limb and say Newsweek is not at all to blame here, since they identified the source of the story accurately. Now the leaker made it up or he didn’t; either way he felt the heat and partially recanted in a way designed to move the onus onto Newsweek. Now there may be no way to determine if the story is in fact true, but it certainly seems possible in light of other things we did at Guantanamo, which is why the “retraction” isn’t getting much traction in the Islamic world.
You mean it’s just the latest example of how the left-wing media is negligent and is allowing its political bias to stand in the way of good reporting, and abetting our enemies at a time of war.[/quote]
Are you quoting the blast fax?
It’s useful to note that the extremists are the ones milking story this both here and overseas.
“scapegoated”, eh? So they’re blameless in your moonbat land.[/quote]
Didn’t mean that; I hope they have trouble sleeping tonight. But this never would have happened with Abu Ghirab filling up the tinder box.
And how the hell is this “bias”? It’s just garden-variety fuckup on a story.
Wait, you’re saying Newsweek is some sort of left wing propaganda font?! I guess that explains how you can believe in a “liberal media bias” – just define everything left of Rush Limbaugh as Liberal.
Whoa whoa whoa, back the truck up! Regardless of what particular ideology benefits from Newsweek’s boner, the big issue is, yes, demand more fucking accountability from the media. Jayson Blair and Rathergate were Busch-league, things are pretty serious now.
Did Newsweek have some sort of fiendish liberal agenda in reporting this story? Hell, that wouldn’t really even matter if they’d, you know, just report the fucking news competantly.
Or alternately, actually report the news! It’s amazing that the Blair memo never broke on this side of the pond.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006322.php
Anyway, let’s get some things straight:
* [b]Newsweek's source blew it. But it was a source they had used before and they had no reason not to trust him.[/b] * Hundreds of items similar to Newsweek's story have been published in the past year, all of them true. The torture at Abu Ghraib was far worse than this, and other reports of Koran desecration have been published in the past year as well. They inspired no riots, and there was no special reason for Newsweek to think their report would inspire any riots either. * The Taliban stages a resurgence every spring, anti-Americanism has been on the rise for some time, and the rioters in Afghanistan are responsible for the riots in Afghanistan. The Newsweek story is clearly just a pretext, and another story would have done just as well given their obvious animosity toward America. * Under any other circumstances, conservatives would heartily agree. The phony outrage over this is just a cynical excuse for the usual press bashing. Newsweek should buck up.
Hmm. Something else to note is the Pentagon’s legalistic denial of the story
The Pentagon denied the story? They just said that the report cited wasn’t intended to find Qur’an desecration. They didn’t even go as far as to say that the report in question didn’t find it, just that it wasn’t intended to.
Uh, yes - the person who negligently spreads false information that incites violence and death deserves blame for that conduct.
Even aside from the fact that we’re at war, it’s criminal, like calling “fire” in a theatre causing stampeding death.
Newsweek has now published a complete retraction.
Utterly untrue. Do more reading of the official statements.
Uh, yes - the person who negligently spreads false information that incites violence and death deserves blame for that conduct.
Even aside from the fact that we’re at war, it’s criminal, like calling “fire” in a theatre causing stampeding death.
Newsweek has now published a complete retraction.[/quote]
Which is different from when you start a war on false pretenses and no one is held accountable. Moralizing from the right on this issue is sickening.
I don’t think you can reasonably compare Newsweek’s article to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. The former provided an allegation by an unnamed source of an event that had happened in the past and the latter is a claim that the hearer needs to take drastic action immediately to survive.
I don’t think there’s enough responsibility left over after the rioters and local inciters get their share to leave anything significant for Newsweek. They may have been sloppy, but that story was, in my opinion, at least, a pretext for the riots, not a cause, and as such doesn’t carry much real blame back to Newsweek’s door.
Oh, and I don’t think we’re at war in any sense where you could apply “aiding and abetting” restrictions to the press.