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On Connected

15 comments on On Connected

On Connected

: I’ll be on MSNBC’s Connected at noon on the Newsweek mess.

: LaShawn Barber has a fresh batch of Newsweek links.

: Nick Gillespie is steamed.

: Austin Bay says this is the press’ Abu Ghraib.

: Conor Friedersdorf says this is a tipping point for press coverage of the war on terrorism: the tip being that coverage has an impact on the world and on lives.

: Here’s Reuters (my emphases):

Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down….

Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true.

That’s why Newsweek’s nonretraction-retraction is going to continue to cause problems and is just as bad as CBS’s nonretraction-retraction in the Rather story, except this one is dangerous. They should have said that they retract the story because they do not have any reason to know that it is true. We are not in the business of reporting what might be true, what could be true if only we know more. We are in the business of reporting what we know is true. Aren’t we?

:Ankle Biting Pundits are asking you to name the scandal.

15 responses to “On Connected”

  1. Gunther Avatar
    Gunther

    When the Newsweek thing comes up, you might want to mention that the so-called retraction isn’t a retraction at all. Instead the source that they cited now remembers the Koran abuse report as being from a different document than he one he originally claimed. Not exactly the same thing, no matter how certain people would like to frame it.

  2. JT Avatar
    JT

    I actually give Newsweek credit for admitting they may have made a mistake. But lets be clear, accusations of Qur’an desecration are not new. They been reported in the media before. Moreover, the conservative media and blogs have many more numerous mistakes and I’ve yet to see any one of them utter a mea culpa, or to see Jeff get on his high horse about it. Yes, there were problems in the way this was reported and someone needs to be held accountable, but the problem here is more of system-wide problem than just a liberal bias problem at Newsweek. I, for one, am tired of hearing that boring excuse everytime someone doesn’t like what they hear. There are two sad things here: 1.) the death of 15 people; and 2.) this will be yet another excuse for the real problems in our country to be ignored.

  3. carsonfire Avatar
    carsonfire

    But one of Newsweek’s primary claims that the story is true is that it was not denied properly. Taken in conjunction with a guy who can’t remember exactly what he read and where, how does this stand up as a fully credible story?
    Add in a few more actual facts… instead of just confused hearsay… such as the fact that this sort of thing was against the rules at Gitmo, and that we know that there were actually proactive efforts made to make concessions to the detainees’ religious requirements.
    We saw this with the Rather memos, too. The Kos gang claims that the right is just opposed to facts, while themselves playing *incredibly* fast and loose with facts in order to validate fervent *belief* as fact. To this day, there are plenty on the left who believe that those memos were typed on a prototype Selectric shipped back through a time warp while the typist stood on his head and measured out one of the characters so that it would precisely match the positioning of the default font of a word processing program decades later. They then ridicule the right as fantasists for believing that a document that obviously was typed on MS Word was simply typed on MS Word.
    Seems to be the same thing, here. The Newsweek story crumbles badly under actual *total* scrutiny (again, instead of simply cherry-picking and playing word games), and the left claims that the *right* is self-deluded.

  4. Leon B Avatar
    Leon B

    “We are not in the business of reporting what might be true, what could be true if only we know more. We are in the business of reporting what we know is true”. Well said. I totally agree.

  5. Gunther Avatar
    Gunther

    We are not in the business of reporting what might be true, what could be true if only we know more. We are in the business of reporting what we know is true
    Like stories of WMDs in Iraq?
    Is this faith-based (faith in the US administration and it’s Chosen People status) reporting what Jeff advocates to replace mainstream media?

  6. rightnumberone Avatar
    rightnumberone

    Jeff,
    Come now. Of course there’s reason to believe this story is true; after all, an anonymouse government officials says he thinks he may have read it someplace, and when given a chance to deny the story, the Pentagon had no comment, so obviously they are trying to cover it up since they are war criminals over there, so, hey, that just CONFIRMS its true.
    You seem to think this is some sort of weird abberation; that this is somehow a departure from the norms of reporting out of Washington.
    Where in the world did you get that idea?

  7. monk Avatar
    monk

    ‘ut one of Newsweek’s primary claims that the story is true is that it was not denied properly. Taken in conjunction with a guy who can’t remember exactly what he read and where, how does this stand up as a fully credible story?’
    Its definitely not a fully credible story. On the other hand, if they had a good source, and if the Pentagon had not denied it, its not an unreasonable story to publish. Remember this was just one line in a 10 line story. Also remember that we’ve heard stories that are far worse (to my secular ear anyway).
    If anyone could have predicted the reaction, then it would have made great sense to try and verify the story. But I don’t believe either Newsweek or the Pentagon predicted this reaction.
    I mean, the Washington Post published 2 key stories about Jessica Lynch that turned out to be bogus (that she had fought till she ran out of ammo) based on a ‘reliable’ source. Was that less poor reporting ?

  8. dries Avatar
    dries

    MSM strikes at W again…But, the very same people who are in uproar over koran’s “desecration”, had no problem blowing up ancient statues of buddha, nor would have a problem torching christian churches, had there been any left to burn.
    a few years ago, some “NYC arist” dunked a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, much to accolades of NYC cultural elites. wasn’t jose serrano lucky that christians don’t handle real people like him, same way muslims do imaginary ones?

  9. IcallMasICM Avatar
    IcallMasICM

    ‘If anyone could have predicted the reaction, then it would have made great sense to try and verify the story.’
    Who’s kidding who, it was too good to check on and we all know who the bad guys at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are.

  10. beautifulatrocities Avatar
    beautifulatrocities

    Note how in the MSM the murderous Muslims are essentially excused, just as when murderous Muslims went on an anti-Christian pogrom in Nigeria over the Miss Universe pageant. Liberals blamed the pageant for disrespecting other cultures.
    Would the MSM blame Terrence McNally if Manhattan Christians went on an anti-Muslim pogrom over The Corpus of Jesus Christ?

  11. Jake Avatar
    Jake

    Judging by the baying-for-Muslim-blood types commenting on here I’d say the mainstream media are much fairer than lowest common denominator mob mentality “journalism”.

  12. ralph phelan Avatar
    ralph phelan

    “Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true.”
    I recently heard that Michael Isikoff held down a twelve year old girl while John Barry sodomized her, but that might not be true. Still, they haven’t denied it, and I have no evidence that it’s false, either.

  13. tonynoboloney Avatar
    tonynoboloney

    ralph phelan, I heard the same story, only the girl was 15.
    Great post ralph.

  14. Ken Layne Avatar
    Ken Layne

    Your first few commenters said it already, but I’ll say it again:
    Jeff, there’s no “Newsweek mess.” It’s all bullshiat, and you’ve been working in media long enough to know this is bullshiat. It has nothing to do with the story — or blurb, in this case.
    The story isn’t new, isn’t even especially volatile in a world where U.S. forces torture and murder the terror suspects in Iraq and elsewhere. You obviously aren’t reading Sploid so I’ll kindly direct you to a simple explanation of the story, its history and why people pretend they’re outraged about it.

  15. carsonfire Avatar
    carsonfire

    The quotes in your Sploid piece tend to show where some of the real naivete resides:
    Earlier this year, lawyers representing Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo said their clients told them that military police threw at least one Koran into a toilet. A released Afghan named Ehsannullah told The Washington Post in 2003 that U.S. soldiers taunted him by doing the same thing. Three Britons released last year also said Korans were put into toilets by U.S. guards.
    Which is more likely? Habitual Koran toilet-tossing or playbook accusations?
    First of all, I can think of *far* more effective ways of desecrating a holy book in front of somebody short of gumming up the plumbing. Simply spitting on it, stamping on it. Rubbing urine on it. Smearing excrement on it. Setting it on fire. All of those things would be more dramatic for a seated detainee. Trying to flush a book down a toilet is an absurd idea, but it makes for a good accusation because it’s short and snappy. It’s easier to work up a good bit of outrage in your face saying “he flushed my holy book down the toilet!” than saying “he — he threw it around carelessly and spit on it! And then I, uh, wiped it off and it was OK.”
    (I mean, think about reality for a minute… the military is in charge of the installation; who has to fix the plumbing when the pipes get clogged up with scores of Korans? Will Draino be effective against the words of the great prophet? Will exhortations against the infidels eventually back up into the base commander’s toilet?)
    Anyway, the excuses being offered for Newsweek aren’t just weak, they’re embarrassing. It’s OK to report things without proper substantiation because “somebody reported it before”… which could mean nothing more than the press has been passing around the same unsubstantiated rumor for some time, and Newsweek just got caught holding the hot potato. Is the third person who told the rumor more or less to blame than the second person who told the rumor? What differentiates the second person who told the rumor from the fiftieth person who told the rumor? Absolutely nothing, especially when your business is purportedly getting to facts, and not just repeating rumors.
    And the denial bit is just frightening, because I know this same standard is sometimes applied to private individuals. Using a lack of denial to run with a story that has no real substantiation seems to take this practice into more terrifying regions. ralph phelan’s satiric comment up there isn’t too far from the press’s actual “ethical” standards. How often have you heard “and they could not be reached for comment”? Did you know that this sometimes comes as a surprise to the subject of these stories, because they *weren’t* contacted for comment in the first place? “Could not be reached” sometimes simply means “I the reporter was too lazy and unmotivated to make the phone call or send an email”. But the implication is always that the subject is actually admitting to the story by default because they’re in hiding. Awfully convenient.