I first got wind of the flushing Koran story at IIMPR when Naomi Klein was talking about strategic leaking and how torture is meant to cause fear and not effective at interrogation which is largely correct ( read more here). She then mentioned the flushing Koran story. My first thought was that any chump would know fear wouldn't be the reaction to a desecration like that, rage would be. If someone flushed a Bible I wouldn't be afraid that someone would grab me in the middle of the night, I'd be outraged. And that's exactly the reaction that took place. We learn that it WAS strategic leaking, but of a different kind.
Read the news here, here, here. and so on. A retraction was finally published. It was revealed that the accusation came from one solitary anonymous source who couldn't corroborate his claim. I think this guy knew full well what the reaction would be and he strategically leaked it to cause the riots and realized that Muslims would be skeptical of any backtracking. Newsweek is investigating, but just like Rathergate, heads really need to role. Dan Rather just made a false run at a sitting President with crap. This time people died because of MSM politics (as Michelle Malkin puts it Newsweek lied and people died. They're so desperate for ANYTHING, they'll run with it with shobby reporting. They'll take any accusation from any disgruntled government figure who wants to beat on the man. There needs to be a real investigation here.
This story is just another episode in a long trend of the seditious liberal media. We had the false story that all the Iraqi museums were looted only to find it was more like a few dozen pieces probably by museum workers. We found Dan Rather ran with forged documents. We find Newsweek ran with a spotty source. We had Seymour Hersh take evidence of an ongoing criminal investigation where people were already indicted and publish it in the press as breaking news. We've had plagarists and we've had circulation number embellishments.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Also see related posts here and here
Korangate? Lame. And I thought it was just "big media" that was guilty of the -gate garbage.
2 - RJ
NewsWeek is an anti-Bush rag. This kind of anti-administration bias is unsurprising.
But, in this case, people DIED. Like, over a dozen.
Some heads need to roll over at NewsWeek...
3 - John Bambenek
17 at last count... and yes... Isikoff needs to be fired. No sticking around like Rather managed to do.
4 - RJ
Isikoff has not seemed like a real sinister partisan asshole, though. I've always had some respect for the man (unlike Rather).
Perhaps his superiors are more to blame?
5 - dee
I don't know if this story is true or not but I will say Newsweek should not have to apologize for it if it is true but I would hope they would think twice before publishing a story that might make matters worse.
6 - RealCon
The problem with news today is that it frequently is a story -- not news. And stories are frequently made up with a bias or some subjective motive in mind. In the past Isikoff has had some good stories -- but this one happens to be bad -- very bad. He should have known the potential damage the story was going to do -- whether true or not. But because of the potential reaction, his editors should have taken extra precautions to be sure it was verified to be absolutely true. That is why editors are paid. I would let Isikoff remain but those in charge of editorial policy who let this go through should be shown the door. The best way to teach the fools at Newsweek a lesson is to drop subscriptions to the magazine.
7 - RJ
NewsWeek is just bathroom-reading for me. I like a few regular sections of their newsmag (The CW watch, their quotes of the week, their every-other-week George Will column), but I skip over most of the rest.