Newsweek Wallows in Same Mire as CBS News

NewsMax ^ | 5/16/05 | Barrett Kalellis

[wagglebee]

First it was CBS News fabricating a story out of whole cloth in its discredited "60 Minutes" report on George W. Bush's Air National Guard record in Texas. Two weeks ago, liberals-for-hire journalists Michael Isikoff and John Barry belched up a poorly sourced and dubious report that a copy of the Koran was flushed down an apocryphal toilet during interrogation of Muslim prisoners held at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

Only this time the repercussions abroad have caused Muslims to riot in the streets of Kabul, leading to the deaths of about 15 people, and resulted in strained relationships with the Afghan government, not to mention millions of Muslims that follow Al-Jazeera.

Playing into the hands of Islamist fanatics and anti-Americans around the world, Newsweek has not only tipped its hand at its own agenda, but also set back the cause of U.S. foreign policy, which is attempting to make the case for democracy in countries that have never known it.

Like Dan Rather and his producers at "60 Minutes," Newsweek's reporters were trying to mine whatever unsavory pickings they might be able to glean from U.S. treatment of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo, in the spirit of the Abu Ghraib scandals.

With no real attempt made either to find credible sources or to vet whatever gossip they stumbled across, Isikoff and Barry lurched into print with the inflammatory suggestion that a Koran was unceremoniously cast into a commode by U.S. interrogators to break the spirit of a detainee.

With the rising tide of furious Afghans, and angry denials by the Department of Defense and Condoleezza Rice, Newsweek's editors had to issue an apology of sorts, feeling sanctimoniously sorry for getting "any part of our story wrong," and extending their superfluous sympathies "to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."

Again, like CBS, the principal motivation for the story seemed to be to discredit President Bush and American foreign policy under his administration. Anything that would give credence to Islamist and anti-American claims that the U.S. is either torturing or otherwise humiliating Muslim prisoners is fair game, according to this crowd.

With Abu Ghraib the poster boy for impropriety, jumping on the attack bandwagon is the preferred method of the liberal media – blaming misbehavior of lower-level military personnel as merely a surrogate for the sanctioned military policy of higher-ups. As former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger unhappily concluded in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, today's press wants to make a "judgment first, [and find] evidence later."

One wonders why the liberal media tiptoe around the sensitivities of Muslims, whose every religious belief has to be respected, yet they regularly denigrate devout Christian beliefs as self-deceptions by the less intelligent or dogmatic, and in the case of fundamentalists, simply superstitions held by inflexible rubes and Bible-thumpers.

One also wonders why, a few years back, liberals were very much in support of the right of dissenters to burn the flag, or to wear it as underwear or use it as toilet paper. "It's only a piece of colored cloth," they declared. "Who cares what a person does with a piece of cloth?"

Blinded to the spiritual dimension of the U.S. flag, liberals routinely ridiculed the patriotic impulses of Americans who did not wish to see their country's symbol – and the thousands of soldiers who died for it – thus desecrated.

Yet when an alleged copy of the Koran is similarly violated, liberals fall all over themselves to expose this outrage, how deep-seated beliefs of millions of Muslims are being regularly debased and traduced by the ignorant Americans who support President Bush.

That's the message and it's sheer hypocrisy, if not treasonous. The liberal media don't care any more about the Koran than they do about the Bible. It's simply a sleazy way for them to inflame any group that is demonstrably anti-Bush and against current U.S. foreign policy, thus mirroring their own attitudes. Is this not "aiding and comforting the enemy"?

Doesn't anyone question why thousands of Muslims would take to the streets, anyway, only to vent their anger about a book being destroyed, instead of marching against human beings being mistreated at a prison? Would Americans take to the streets if an Imam on our shores flushed a Bible down the hopper? Would the media take up the cudgels?

Many have difficulty understanding why thousands of people think a printed book is more important than a fellow human being. And many others question why some journalists would deliberately try to enrage them for blatantly ideological purposes.

[wagglebee]

Playing into the hands of Islamist fanatics and anti-Americans around the world, Newsweek has not only tipped its hand at its own agenda, but also set back the cause of U.S. foreign policy, which is attempting to make the case for democracy in countries that have never known it.

Many have difficulty understanding why thousands of people think a printed book is more important than a fellow human being. And many others question why some journalists would deliberately try to enrage them for blatantly ideological purposes.

I really think the White House and the Pentagon should yank Newsweek's press access over this.

[ReadyNow]

Ummm... Arab society runs on bribery. Is there any possibility that American anti-Americans are PAID in return for their anti-Americanism. How much would it take to compromise, say, a respected reporter like Jayson Blair?

[mware]

John Batchelor's show is going to be good tonight. He has been a staunch defender of John Bolton and the troops protecting us.

[leprechaun9]

THE MEDIA HALL OF SHAME:

Jayson Blair
Dan Blather
seeBS
NEWSWEEK
Michael Isakoff

other names welcome!

[petercooper]

CBS News, Newsweek: Fake, But Accurate

[Noumenon]

That's the message and it's sheer hypocrisy, if not treasonous.

This is beyond treason. This is incitement t omurder and war. Both of these two libtards should pay the ultimate price. The blood of dozens is now on their hands; the blood of thousands will be before this is over.

[wagglebee]

The "gold medal" has to go to Walter Duranty of the New York Slimes. In the 1930's he covered-up Stalin's genocide and wrote about how wonderful the USSR was. For these apologetics he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/791vwuaz.asp?ZoomFont=YES

[mowkeka]

Great flag-Koran analogy. I hadn't thought of it that way.
Shame on the liberal media.

[Enterprise]

They really should yank their credentials.

I would want these two numbskulls and their editor to rationally explain what possible public good this story served. It doesn't involve abuse, and it doesn't involve criminal activity or corruption. If it were true, it would have been something the Military would have quickly investigated and handled. And it wouldn't have happened again.

And one more time, are there NOT more compelling stories to investigate? How about Hillary's fund raising scandal? Too scared? I thought so.

How the sexual predator scandal involving New York politicians and interns. Oh, Democrats are the main suspects? I thought so.

Democrats have accused Tom DeLay of unethical conduct. There is plenty of evidence that many Democrats have done exactly the same, and worse. Not interested? I thought so.

NEWSWEEK - Once again you bastards have tipped the world to your immature bias against conservatives. But this time, you got people killed. Yes - you are a bunch of bastards!

[mickie]

"John Batchelor's show is going to be good tonight".

What time is his show on?
East Coast

[wagglebee]

The liberal attitude toward the American flag or the Bible was the first thing that came to my mind when this story broke, it demonstrates the blatant hypocrisy of the left.

[TheForceOfOne]

Still waiting for the taped version of the interview with Ken Starr which C-BS says they will not produce.

[wagglebee]

Great job of putting everything in perspective.

[Blue Screen of Death]

Don't smoke in the dynamite room!

[wagglebee]

Still waiting for the taped version of the interview with Ken Starr which C-BS says they will not produce.

Dan Ratherbiased probably has it at his house where he is busy re-editing and over-dubbing it to match the script he wrote.

[april15Bendovr]

Just an example of how CBS and Newsweek investigate themselves.

Couric: “Are you still searching for the real killers?”

Simpson: “Well, in recent years, I've done nothing actively. There's one guy was a volunteer early who's still trying to look into things. But what really happened about four years ago when Doc Johnson's group was trying to get the phone records.

“They had been actively searching a lot of things. They're the ones that got all the doctors together and came to the conclusion that whoever did this was left handed.  They were trying to get phone records. Because they Lou Brown was accurate when he said the last time they had spoke to Nicole was after 11.

“And they realized that the official records were never presented in court. This is a very simple thing, okay. We'd like to get the records. But the court and the Browns have to sign off. Fine, I didn't believe that they were correct. I honestly thought Doc Johnson was wrong. But we all got suspicious when they worked so hard to keep from showing those phone records.

Couric: “So, you were frustrated? You gave up the effort?”

Simpson: “No, no, no, didn't give up, went to court three different times and was rules against all three times, took it as far as it could be taken on something as simple as a phone record. And it really kind of discouraged some of these groups who had volunteered and some of the PI's who couldn't get people to talk to them from helping out.  And that's the way it is. But why would you have to fight something as simple as, ‘Here's the phone record. You guys are wrong. It's over.’ You know?”

[TheForceOfOne]

Add that guy from MSMNC that lost his mind one night along with Chrissy Matthews the pervert that lurks on college campus's posing as a reporter.

[TheForceOfOne]

They'll release it in time. I'm betting the edited version looks worse than a 1960's Japanese Godzilla movie with the words as voice not matching the lip movements of Ken. lol

[Bear_Slayer]

[citizencon]

"And one more time, are there NOT more compelling stories to investigate? How about Hillary's fund raising scandal? Too scared? I thought so."

Precisely why the Clinton-butt-kisser Isikoff came out with this explosive but false report...to divert public attention from Hillary's troubles.