Not News, But Weak

It's a shame the U.S. government can't sue Newsweek...

Muslims in Afghanistan gave Washington three days to offer a response to a Newsweek story that claimed the Islamic holy book was desecrated at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, but the magazine apologized Sunday for the report, which prompted deadly riots across Afghanistan last week.

Reaction across the Islamic world has been strong, with daily demonstrations since the May 9 story came out. At least 15 people died in Afghanistan after protests broke out Tuesday following the report that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Many of the 520 inmates at Guantanamo are Muslims arrested during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, insults to the Quran and Islam's prophet, Muhammad, are regarded as blasphemy and punishable by death.

"The American soldiers are known for disrespect to other religions. They do not take care of the sanctity of other religions," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Pakistani chief of a coalition of radical Islamic groups, said Sunday.

Ahmed's comments came a day after Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, both allies of Washington, demanded an investigation and punishment for those behind the reported desecration of the Quran.

In Afghanistan, Islamic scholars and tribal elders called for the punishment of anyone found to have abused the Quran, said Maulawi Abdul Wali Arshad, head of the religious affairs department in Badakhshan province.

Arshad and the provincial police chief said the scholars met in Faizabad, 310 miles northeast of the capital, Kabul, and demanded a "reaction" from U.S. authorities within three days.

But Newsweek apologized in an editor's note for Monday's edition and said they were re-examining the allegations.

"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," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote.

It's beyond absurd that the story triggered riots, but consider that the next time the press tries to draw an analogy between the Christian right in this country and Islamic fundamentalists. The more important issue is that Newsweek raced a story into print that made the U.S. military and the Bush administration look bad, and the consequences have been horrific to say the least. Instapundit gets it right...

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.

I should probably ignore the liberal news media aspect of this story and focus on the irresponsibility. The press fails to impose standards on itself, and as a result, it damages its own credibility. That's a problem for the press, obviously. Put it this way -- outside of photographic proof, who would believe a report about another Abu Ghraib type torture if Newsweek reported it now? Heck, after Rathergate, who's to say that pictures or documents are legitimate?

But again, that's an issue for the journalism profession. But when the damage also extends to U.S. foreign policy -- well, there's a concern for all of us. Plenty of concern has been expressed about the damage to U.S. credibility following the Iraq War and the erroneous reports regarding WMD. The government can move to reform erroneous intelligence -- but how's it supposed to reform erroneous press reports? Maybe Newsweak needs to stick to ranking high schools.

As a final note, John Miller at the Corner points out that George Washington is on the cover of Newsweek. The man who never told a lie is fronting a magazine that lied. Maybe the nation ought to sue on behalf of the Father of our Country.