BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Monday, May 16, 2005
NEWSWEEK WATCH. A
couple of valuable posts in trying to figure out what
happened.
1. Juan
Cole gives Newsweek
a pass, writing:
Isikoff's source ...
stands by his report of the incident, but is merely tracing it to
other paperwork. What difference does that make? Although
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita angrily denounced the source as
no longer credible, in the real world you can't just get rid of a
witness because the person made a minor mistake with regard to a
text citation. It is like saying that we can't be sure someone has
really read the Gospels because he said he read about Caiaphas in
the Gospel of Mark rather than in the Gospel of John.
Newsweek has, in other words,
confirmed that the source did read a US government account of the
desecration of the Koran. [Cole's emphasis]
Cole seems to give Newsweek
more credit than the magazine gives itself, which sets off some
warning signals for me. Still, this is well worth reading. It's a
long post with lots of background.
2. At the Daily Kos, Susan Hu
digs
up some nuggets, the most
relevant of which are earlier reports of Koran desecration at
Guantánamo.
Meanwhile, here is where the right
is going with this: Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs has a
headline that reads "Hizb
ut-Tahrir Teams Up With Newsweek,"
a reference to a radical Islamist group believed to be behind some of
last week's riots. And note that Johnson refers to Hizb ut-Tahrir as
a "terror gang," even though the very article from which he quotes
describes the group as one that "focuses on mass agitation rather
than acts of terrorism."
Much as we need to know the truth
about Newsweek's reporting, we also need to be on guard
against letting the right use this to shut up critics of the Bush
administration.
posted at 1:05 PM |
1 comments
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1 Comments:
I don't know what qualifies as a reliable source, but if this is correct, Newsweek's source was not only anonymous, but at least second-hand. This wouldn't fill me with confidence if I had to stand behind my story.
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
