Newsweek has now basically said “Never mind!” in what is essentially a retraction of a report claiming that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the holy Koran — a report that led to angry riots in Afghanistan and more than a dozen deaths.
Here’s the key quote from the Newsweek in what is effectively a retraction:
Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur’an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghan-istan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.
Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur’an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them “not credible.” Our original source later said he couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Qur’an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.
(Note to readers: Our original post was headlined that Newsweek “retracts” the story. Our post notes that this is effectively a retraction – but Newsweek’s editor in an interview with the New York Times noted in a new post above insists the magazine is not retracting its report — just apologizing. So it’s apologizing for its report not being conifirmed or wrong but won’t retract it because that would admit that it was wrong. We have changed the headline on our post due to this new interview — but NOT the body of what we wrote earlier).
This journalistic blunder almost seems to seem to be a print version of CBS’s (in)famous Rathergate scandal that hurt CBS anchor Dan Rather.
Why? Because this story was put into the magazine prematurely and one of its authors is a noted investigative journalist. Investigative journalists gain clout by their credibility, which stems from stories that hold up to scrutiny. And it’s clear from the Newsweek account that this story could have marinated a bit before being published.
One of the reporters involved in it was Michael Isikoff,especially well-known for his stories on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair. He has become a key Newsweek investigative journalist — if not THE key Newsweek investigative journalist, in terms of high public profile. Another Newsweek article explains the genesis of a sloppily published story that literally cost some people their lives:
Two weeks ago, in our issue dated May 9, Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported in a brief item in our periscope section that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur’an down a toilet. Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur’an charge.
A lot of this is CYA because, in the final analysis, Newsweek was WRONG and had not gotten the kind of iron-clad verification it need. It ASSUMED a lot. And we hate to use a cliche used by one of our old editors, but he used to say (ad nauseum): “Don’t assume because it makes an a-s-s of u and me…”
Why was it run? The magazine analyzes it a bit more here. To be sure, ask anyone who has worked in the news media knows the intoxicating feeling of being onto a good story. If you have the facts you don’t want to sit on them; you want to publish them as soon as possible so your employer is FIRST and BREAKS the story. It’s a combination of a journalism and an ego thing. Being second to report a new twist on a new story isn’t what competitive journalism is all about.
This combination of journalism plus reporters’ ego becomes risky when the reporter’s job is investigative journalism since being wrong can have more profound implications — in this case, as CNN notes:
At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured last week when thousands of demonstrators marched in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world, officials and eyewitnesses said….
Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita blamed Newsweek’s report for the unrest in Muslim countries.
“People are dying. They are burning American flags. Our forces are in danger,” he told CNN.
Violent protests broke out in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and elsewhere last week after the magazine cited sources saying investigators looking into abuses at the military prison found interrogators “had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”
The Newsweek conditional mea culpa is gettin headlines all over the world. Deadly ‘error’ declares the Calcutta Telegraph.
London’s Telegraph ends its report this way:Told of the source’s change of heart, Larry DiRita, the Pentagon spokesman, said: “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said.”
It is the latest embarrassment for the media in the United States and is sure to be seized on by the Republican Right to bolster its claim that the news industry is biased against Mr Bush and his “war on terrorism”.
Question: will there be consequences for those who let a poorly confirmed story be displayed in a high-profile manner in a major news magazine so that it branded the military and by implication Americans in general as being contemptuous of Islam, sparking riots that ended in some deaths? Most likely not. Part of the reason is that even some military officials downplayed the report’s roles in the deaths:At a Pentagon press conference Thursday, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited U.S. commanders as saying the protests in Jalalabad, at least, were more about local politics than anti-American sentiment stirred by the Newsweek report.
On the other hand, Newsweek notes in its second report that Al Qaeda operatives are supposed to make allegations that inflame passions: It quoted a U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, as saying: “If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels..”
Did Newsweek’s investigative reporters learn in their digging about this Al Qaeda tactic? Why wasn’t that noted in the original report?
They could have still made the allegation and balanced it with the tidbit that Al Qaeda operatives are supposed to make allegations and perhaps have avoided this.
That would have been truly effective CYA. Right now it would seem that the A needs a corporate spanking.
BUT THERE ARE OTHER VOICES ON THE NEWSWEEK RETRACTION AND HERE’S A CROSS SECTION:
—Glenn Reynolds:
Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they’d feel much worse — which is why they generally don’t report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don’t extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we’d be hearing about Big Media’s superior fact-checking and layers of editors.
People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because — let’s be clear here — Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.
—Daimnation:”Legend has it that a hoax story in an American newspaper, which said the Chinese were planning to tear down the Great Wall, led to the Boxer Revolution. It didn’t, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I heard about violent anti-American protests in Afghanistan, spurred on by a brief Newsweek report about Guantanamo Bay interrogators allegedly desecrating the Koran.”
—Scared Monkeys:”So a huge international incident was created over NEWSWEEKS failure to do proper fact checking. He did not dispute the charge is much much different than he verified the charge was accurate. I think that Isikoff and Barry should sent over to the areas that are rebelling and see the results of their work. Maybe personal interviews with the families that lost loved ones because they rushed a story.”
—Talk Left:”But read closely. Michael Isikoff and John Barry of Newsweek reported May 9 (Periscope Section)that a “knowledgable government source” confirmed a military report that investigators at Guantanamo flushed a Koran down the toilet in order to make a detainee provide information. Now the source is backtracking saying he couldn’t be sure. However, released detainees have made the same claims for months.”
—James Joyner:”I understand, too, the pressures journalists are under to get to press as quickly as possible. That’s true even in the blogosphere. But given the high profile Newsweek has and the incredible sensitivity of the allegations at hand, they had a duty to be damned sure they had it right before running with the story. Their haste and willingness to believe the worst about America’s military helped get a lot of people killed.”
—The Political Teen has some links and VIDEO.
—USSNeverdock:”The saying going around the blogsphere is “Newsweek lied, people died”. Someone should get fired over this one.”
—Clayton Cramer:”The distinction between us bloggers (the guys that a CBS executive characterized as people working in their pajamas) and professional journalists is supposed to be the care to check sources that professional journalists use. So when I saw that Newsweek had reported that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had descrated the Koran–leading to anti-American rioting and deaths in the Islamic world, I was a little disappointed–in our government. It appears that I should have been disappointed in Newsweek.”
—Michelle Malkin has a bunch of links and comments. One of hers:”Newsweek has blood on its hands. Blood on its desks. Isikoff should cough up his source.”
—Roger Simon:”Thomas and Co. do not deal with the real problem, the anonymous sourcing that should be the instrument of a totalitarian press, not a free one. They seem to blame the problem on Michael Isikoff having misjudged his source..”
—Betsy Newmark:
So, what’s going on at Newsweek. They surely knew what an incendiary story this would be and the potential for violent repercussions. They knew it was thinly sourced. But they went ahead anyways. Did they just want to be the first with a sensational story? Were they just careless? Or did they like the idea that, if there were violence, all the stories reporting it would have to mention their publication as the source? Or, were they more malevolent? Did they like the idea of sparking violence across the Muslim world and making American gains in that part of the world more difficult?
—The Left Coaster:”Now, Isikoff seems to have screwed up by relying on a single source and not getting documentary proof of the original allegation – and this is a particularly bad screw up if Newsweek is actually retracting the veracity of the story entirely. So, I would hope that Newsweek and other media outlets learn from this to be more careful about whom they trust considering the costly nature of this mistake. There is no excuse for shoddy journalism.”
–RJ Eskow at skippy the bush kangaroo (all written in lower case):
(If) the story’s wrong, let’s get it retracted. but if the right-wingers try to frame the “liberal media” over this, the end result will be less trust of the u.s. and what it says, not more.
the fact is the story was/is plausible to everyone here and overseas, which is the problem that needs to be fixed. changing the perceptions created by abu ghraib and the ‘torture memo’ will help support middle eastern democracy, make america safer, and help our troops. so i dread the rightwing hatefest that is to follow, because it will harden already polarized positions. as the sergeant used to say on “hill street blues,” let’s be careful out there.
—Secular Blasphemy:”How the hell could a news magazine print a story based on a single source far removed from the incident, who only had some vague recall of the actual incident? This is far bigger, far worse than memogate. This is an indictment on the way mainstream media works, being way too reliant on anonymous sources telling a story that is just too good to check.”
—Austin Bay has an EXTENSIVE analysis and calls it the press’ Abu Ghraib. READ IT IN FULL but here’s a tiny taste:History may see Newsweek’s fatal “Koran flushingâ€? story as the US press’ Abu Ghraib. Under any circumstances, Newsweek’s flagrant, tragic error is an error a long-time-coming…
The sin of greed always seems to creep into every scandal and it’s certainly lurking in this tragic incident. Newsweek wants market share, and a scoop grabs readers. But profit generated by a frantic “me firstâ€? quest isn’t the only motive. The “Vietnam-Watergateâ€? motive’s also in play. That’s a tired and dirty game but for three decades it’s been a successful ploy for the New York-Washington-LA media axis. It’s rules are simple. Presume the government is lying– always make that presumption, particularly when the president is a Republican. Presume the worst about the US military– always make that presumption, even when the president is a Democrat. Add multi-cultural icing– the complaints and allegations of “Third World victimsâ€? are given revered status, the statements of US and US-allied nations met with cynical doubt and arrogant contempt.And how is this scandal different? Because, AB argues, we’re in a different world now:
To a degree Newsweek is operating on a “paper template� where the editors and reporters believe the story they “print� shows up in mailboxes or on a magazine rack. In this “template� a phony press allegation remains “local� or US-bound. But there is no “over there� in our world, not anymore. We live in a world where everyone is – in terms of information– next door. Technological compression is the term I coined to describe the situation. Some slip-ups merely damage reputations– Dan Rather and Eason Jordan come to mind. World War Two vets know “loose lips sink ships.� Today, loose (computer) disks can sink ships, but loosey-goosey allegations can lead to riot and death.
Read it all.
—Mark Noonan:”Mr. Whitaker, they weren’t victims of “violence”; they were victims of irresponsible reporting which always presumes the worst about the United States and it’s military forces. You’re correction is nice, but the correction wont carry as far as the initially broadcast lie…for a long time now, American soldiers will be contending with men who’s motivation to fight us stems from your magazine’s irresponsible report.”
—Jeff Jarvis has an extensive must-read post that MUST be read in full. A small taste 4 U:
What a terrible lesson in journalism: about the danger of unnamed sources, about the risk of rushing a story, about the cynicism of gotcha journalism, about the damage a wrong story can do….
This mistake cost people their lives, put the lives of our soldiers in the Mideast at risk, damaged the American position in the effort to defend itself and spread democracy, and damaged the already tattered reputation of journalism. And to what end?
An incident such as this should force us to ask what the end result of journalism should be. Is it to expose anything we can expose? Is it to beat the other guy to tell you something you didn’t know? Or is it to tell the truth? And if you don’t know it to be true, is it reporting? If you rely on unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports, is it journalism?
To sum up journalism as “tell the truth” sounds so damned simplistic. But that is what journalism is about, isn’t it? Or shouldn’t it be? I’m not saying that Newsweek lied. But they didn’t know the truth before they said what they said. They put the gotcha scoop ahead of the truth and ahead of nothing less than the good of mankind.
—Dean Esmay says this lays to rest the argument that professional journalists have greater fact-checking than bloggers and writes (read his whole post):
You guys now have blood on your hands, and you’re going to keep having blood on your hands because of this, as many will claim that the retraction is “lies” and that it “really happened.”
Furthermore, if we ever had any doubts that the press is not on our side in the war, that it is anxious to publish stories of failure and doom and rarely cares to look at our successes (many of them utterly historic), well, Michael Isikoff and Newsweek have finally laid them to rest. We know now that you guys are enemy propagandists. It’s just who you are.
—Americablog’s John Aravosis believes the Bush administration may have gotten to Newsweek and killed valid, accurate story that had boomeranged on them. He argues the magazine is helping the administration discredit a story that was already having bad consquences:
I don’t buy it. Chris and I have been talking about this (I’m still in Paris), and we think President Bush placed a little call to the head of Newsweek, asking him to beg off the story since riots are now spreading across the Middle East. I simply refuse to believe anything the Bush administration says about anything at this point. And the administration’s assurances that they “investigated” the story and found it not true – well, let’s talk about WMD, let’s talk about “no evidence of widespread abuse” of prisoners at US facilities around the world.
I say, bull….this is not the first time the story has been reported about US authorities flushing the Koran down the toilet at Gitmo. And let’s not forget everything else they’ve been doing to the detainees, at Abu Ghraib and beyond. Newsweek is backing down to help Bush out, and it’s sad.
–Centerfield’s Rick Heller, who will be going to journalism school, writes:
As a future journalist, I’ll learn how its supposed to be done. However, given that we are at war, I’m troubled by reports that are extremely damaging to our side, even if they’re true. I suppose the argument can be made that these stories have been circulated for months, based on charges made by released detainees, and that it’s only the American public that does not know about them. Still, I do think journalists should consider the consequences of reports on the tide of military events. Perhaps my professors will straighten me out.
—Uncorrelated’s Greg Prince:”And how many people have died because of inaccurate reporting?”
—Uncorrelated’s Mick Stockinger:
The magazine said other news organizations had already aired charges of Koran desecration based “only on the testimony of detainees.” This is just another way of saying that the information fit our liberal perceptions about the military and the government. How is this any different that how this rumor feeds Muslim preconceptions? This my friends, is the so-called “reality-based community”.
I don’t read Newsweak, and now you know why. We are now set up for an interesting dynamic–the left is going to man the barricades, insisting that the story is true. What started out as unintentional is going to proceed as a partnership between strangebedfellows–radical Imans and left-wing moonbats. Neither want to see the U.S. successful in democratizing the Islamic world.
—LaShawn Barber has a lot of links and writes:”They’ll get what’s coming to them. The blogosphere has erupted in a righteously indigant swarm (The conservative side, of course. Liberal bloggers are busy defending the rag.), forcing mainstream media to pick up the story. I hope they lose advertisers, readers, and heads over this.”
—Atrios:
Since it seems to be the media-wank story of the morning, watch out for right-wingers to try to drag Isikoff down. Yes, Spikey. For, if you can believe it, irresponsible reporting.But you recognize this pattern, right? It’s the fabulous Karl Rove poison the messenger approach to news. Don’t like reality? Make up a new one! Remember: The facts are biased against Republicans…
Again, we don’t know if the story was accurate, and Newsweek only said that their source suddenly backed down on confirming that the information came from a particular document (but now claims to have misremembered it from seeing it in some other documents). Note also that Kurtz takes for granted that the riots were caused by the Newsweek story. It is certainly probable that the story inflamed demonstrators, but without the problems with resources, it is doubtful the riots would have occurred at all.
–Susan Hu at Daily Kos details past reports of Koran desecration (post must be read in full to get the gist). Here’s a small part of what she says and presents with links to support her contentions:”I see this incident this way: Newsweek has good sources for its allegations, but has backed off because it finds itself in a dicey, ill-founded public relations nightmare. Newsweek has foresaken journalism to save what it perceives as its own hide. I hope you’ll all speak up, amplify, and point out areas where we might look further…”
—Who Hijacked Our Country blog:
So once again, like a stampeding herd of cattle, the right wing bloggerbots are off and running. Look out; don’t get trampled. Here comes one now; and here’s another one. And yet another one. Don’t worry, there’re plenty of others, but after awhile one stampeding head of cattle looks pretty much like the rest of them.
So these protests and riots were all caused by a magazine article?!? These right wing dildos have such a clear grasp of cause and effect, they probably think rain is caused by wet sidewalks.
—Juan Cole has an extensive analysis. An excerpt:
Isikoff’s source, in other words, stands by his report of the incident, but is merely tracing it to other paperwork. What difference does that make?…..As a professional historian, I would say we still do not have enough to be sure that the Koran desecration incident took place. We have enough to consider it plausible. Anyway, the important thing politically is that some Muslims have found it plausible, and their outrage cannot be effectively dealt with by simple denial. That is why I say that Bush should just come out and say we can’t be sure that it happened, but if it did it was an excess, and he apologizes if it did happen, and will make sure it doesn’t happen again (if it did).
—Jesse Taylor has a must-read because he argues that not only are many folks (especially bloggers) missing the bigger issue, but that this whole controversy is enmeshed in politics. We’d do a disservice by quoting too much out of context — so read it yourself and here is his final paragraph:
On the flip side, you’ve got us uber-powerful liberals, who have a few magazines, Air America, and, uh…maybe Keith Olbermann? Conservatives complain because the dead and the wounded get airtime, liberals complain because for nearly a year, the media abdicated their responsibility to report accurately on the situation that’s making the Iraqi casket industry boom. Newsweek’s sin is not novel or unexpected if you were against the Iraq war, and we don’t feel satisfied either way in this case – the magazine will get in trouble with this, but we just caught the bank robber shoplifting a Snickers. In the ongoing war to get the media to screw up unidirectionally, the Liberal Media Bias side just got yet more ammunition, while remaining startlingly ignorant of the deeper problems they barely comprehend in their continual stream of kvetching.
—Citizen Smash:”Bad journalism leads to deadly consequences.”
—Joust the Facts:”When you print rumor and innuendo in a time of war you are causing problems, perhaps intentionally. Why do the jihadis get the benefit of the doubt over our military? Is the Bush Administration inherently less trustworthy than Al Qaeda operatives? Maybe there is no Tokyo Rose in the war on terror and so Newsweek thought they’d fill the void. Shame on you.”
—Kevin Drum notes that Newsweek’s source was correct in the past, other news sources have run reports of Koran desecration, and that the Taliban usually stages a resurgance around this time of year. He writes:
But I note that the conservative blogosphere, usually not one for root causes and blame shifting, is pretty unanimously convinced that last week’s riots in Afghanistan are Newsweek’s fault, because they began shortly after the Koran flushing story made it into the Arabic language press. You might demur, thinking that the rioters themselves are to blame for their rioting, and the conservo-sphere would normally agree. They didn’t blame Paul Bremer for last year’s uprising in Najaf, after all. But not this time. The opportunity to bash the press is just too enticing.
—The Debate Link has an excellent long analysis on this issue, and the media in general. Here’s part of the must-read:
It’s been my experience that everybody thinks the media is biased against them, and has dozens of horror stories to “prove” it. I rather subscribe to the “storyline” or “narrative” belief on bias, which is that the media will adapt a particular narrative in which to view certain parties, and will shoehorn events to fit the narrative no matter how much it distorts the facts. So Republicans are seen as cold, evil, money-grubbing bastards, even when it’s wrong. But they also get the benefit of being tough-minded defense hawks and fiscal disciplinarians, even when that’s wrong. Democrats have the same sort of thing: they’re both bleeding heart dovish anti-Americans, and kind-hearted saviors of the poor. Since each side thinks the good things about them are just true, they only focus on the (wrong) bad coverage. Everybody screams, and nobody’s happy.
—Joe Katzman has a superb, detailed analysis, filled with links. Here is a very small part (which we edited) of a post that truly must be read in full due to the amount of info and argument packed into it:Lack of political diversity within the media prevents it from questioning the wisdom of stories like the one Newsweek ran, a simple act that would have forestalled many deaths. Having that kind of political diversity on hand might have given Newsweek some people in the newsroom who would familiarize themselves with stuff like al-Qaeda’s manual (we have them here, on a far lower budget), or have good enough relations with military and intel sources to elicit that kind of information. People who would treat extreme claims from captured terrorists with more skepticism – which, as Greyhawk notes above, is utterly warranted…..
We might have even seen a full and unconditional apology and retraction that would have done more to put a brake on future volence, without removing Newsweek’s ability to continue investigating if it wished….At each and every link in that chain, Newsweek failed. As so many of its partners in the “mainstream media” fail….This time, people died….More will follow, because actions have consequences. More liberal media erosion will also follow, for the same reason.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.