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Newsweek apologizes for getting Koran-Guantanamo Bay story wrong. (The Editor's Desk)
Newsweek ^ | 05/15/05 | The Editor's Desk

Posted on 05/15/2005 10:31:22 AM PDT by Pikamax

May 23 issue - Did a report in NEWSWEEK set off a wave of deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan? That's what numerous news accounts suggested last week as angry Afghans took to the streets to protest reports, linked to us, that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Qur'an while interrogating Muslim terror suspects. We were as alarmed as anyone to hear of the violence, which left at least 15 Afghans dead and scores injured. But I think it's important for the public to know exactly what we reported, why, and how subsequent events unfolded.

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agitprop; antiamericanism; apology; blowmenewsweek; bullzogby; cya; gitmo; guantanamo; islamofascism; korandesecration; lyingliars; mediabias; medialies; newsweakliedppldied; newsweek; newsweekliedppldied; newsweekmurders; propaganda; provokeddeadlyriots; religionofpeace; riot; rop; serveditspurpose; thenewsweekmurders; theythinkitisagame; toolittletoolate; yellingfireinacinema; zogbyism
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To: NormsRevenge; All
Whoever wrote the Newsweek report about Korans being flushed down the toilet belongs in an orange jumpsuit while awaiting trial for high treason. Anyone with half a brain knows that you can't flush even a pocket-size book down the toilet. Assuming the reporter did have half a brain, this story could only have been yet another blatant attempt by the liberal media to whip up more anti-American hysteria in the Middle East and reverse the remarkable progress made in Afghanistan.

Enough is enough. The liberal media is effectively giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. If Al Qaeda ever printed a newsletter in this country, everyone from the publisher to the paperboy would be lead away in leg irons. So there's no reason why the editors and reporters of magazines like Newsweek shouldn't be prosecuted for disseminating treasonous or seditious propaganda. Forget this crap about freedom of the press; there is no such thing as freedom of treason and sedition.

261 posted on 05/15/2005 6:21:05 PM PDT by Holden Magroin
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To: Valin
Exactly.   If you or I caused riots and killings like Newsweek's hoax, our door would be smashed down and we'd be doing hard time!!!
262 posted on 05/15/2005 6:24:01 PM PDT by Smartass (Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió)
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To: Nita Nupress
It's the principle. Don't think about the details -- look at the principle. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. That principle.

Yes, I realize your point, I just disagree with it.

Yes, the actual killers diserve blame, obviously. But so do the people that purposefully incited them to it.

This is a case of yelling fire in a crowded theater that we are talking about here. Or perhaps a better example, if Newsweek maliciously and falsely called Joe Innocent a child molester, and someone killed Joe based on this, wouldn't Newsweek still also be to blame?
263 posted on 05/15/2005 6:26:46 PM PDT by swilhelm73 (Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton)
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To: Smartass
CREDIBILITY IS NOT AN ISSUE
WITH MAIN STREAM MEDIA

264 posted on 05/15/2005 6:26:53 PM PDT by Lady Jag (Googolplex Star Thinker of the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity)
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To: Smartass

As others have pointed out the damage has been done, now how do we (or more specifically newsweek) fix it.
Write and have printed (at newsweek cost) a retaction and have it placed in EVERY paper in the Islamic world. That might be a place to start.


265 posted on 05/15/2005 6:30:12 PM PDT by Valin (The glass is 1/32 full! - The incredible optimist)
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To: Lady Jag

OR ALL LIBERALS


266 posted on 05/15/2005 6:30:38 PM PDT by Smartass (Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió)
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To: Valin

"From another thread on this.

Do these idiots understand what's going on? This is not a game we're playing, peoples lives are at stake and the security of the country is a stake.

Of course they understand that we are war and that lives are at stake. THEY DO NOT CARE.

The end.... the downfall of the Republican Party and Conservative thought.....justifies any means.


267 posted on 05/15/2005 6:31:41 PM PDT by HonestConservative (Bless our Servicemen!)
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To: Valin
Do these idiots understand what's going on? This is not a game we're playing, peoples lives are at stake and the security of the country is a stake.

They don't care

It's all about making President Bush look bad because he was reelection

These IDIOTS have no shame and NOTHING is to low for them

Even the lives of people of Afghanistan .. Our Country and Our Military

268 posted on 05/15/2005 6:32:36 PM PDT by Mo1 (Hey GOP ---- Not one Dime till Republicans grow a Spine !!)
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To: hgro
It makes one wonder just whose side the MSM and their minions are on doesn't it.

Not really. I thought that question had been answered years ago, along about the time of the Tet offensive...

269 posted on 05/15/2005 6:34:50 PM PDT by lancer (If you are not with us, you are against us!)
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To: Mo1

From Powerline
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010468.php
A footnote on the Newsweek mess

Much more remains to be said on the stunning mess Newsweek has created with its May 9 Koran in the toilet story. Newsweek climbs down from the story today, sort of. Others elsewhere have correctly noted that Evan Thomas's article on the mess reads like "damage control."

Why did Thomas have to collaborate on this article with four Newsweek reporters for additional reporting when the man with the information interested readers most deserve to hear from is Thomas's colleague Michael Isikoff? Isikoff makes a token appearance in paragraph 5 of Thomas's article, like Alfred Hitchcock walking through a scene in one of his own movies.

The observant John Steele Gordon writes to note a point of interest in the text of Thomas's Newsweek article:

Liberal MSM magazine finds marginally credible story that makes the military (and Bush Administration) look bad and rushes into print with it without any consideration of the possible consequences. So what else is new?

What I find most interesting is that Newsweek insists on spelling the name of the holy book of Islam "Qur'an" despite the fact that there has been a perfectly good word for it in use in the English language ("Koran") since 1625. "Qur'an" is a transliteration of the Arabic word for the Koran (although my dictionary says there should be a long vowel mark over the A--but, since I don't speak Arabic, I will have to take its word for it). So using Qur'an instead of Koran is like using "Athina" for "Athens" of "Moskva" for "Moscow." In other words, political correctness run amok.

I think the apostrophe--utterly meaningless in an English-language context--is a particularly nice touch of cultural pandering.


270 posted on 05/15/2005 6:35:51 PM PDT by Valin (The glass is 1/32 full! - The incredible optimist)
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To: Valin
I don't believe Newsweek has admitted to how the blunder occurred. To be contrite, one has to first admit their failures to become clean. They haven't done either.
271 posted on 05/15/2005 6:36:14 PM PDT by Smartass (Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió)
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Comment #272 Removed by Moderator

To: hgro; MeekOneGOP; PhilDragoo; Happy2BMe; potlatch; ntnychik; Alamo-Girl; Smartass; ...


I could be wrong - but I do not think I so :

Michael Isikoff at Newsweek was the one who sat on and covered up the Monica Lewinski story that they had researched and written well before Matt Drudge dropped the bombshell and made the Clintonista MSM suddenly play catch-up because they were caught pimping for Slick Willie.

273 posted on 05/15/2005 6:38:25 PM PDT by devolve (My WWII Tribute: http://pro.lookingat.us/WWII.html - more traffic than DU-Koz-LDot)
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To: Smartass

Good point. Thanks, I forgot the rules the MSM plays by
1 We're never wrong
2 In the unlikely event that we are wrong...see rule #1


274 posted on 05/15/2005 6:39:00 PM PDT by Valin (The glass is 1/32 full! - The incredible optimist)
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To: Pikamax; windcliff
Conversation overheard at Newsweek HQ.

How did we get the facts wrong?
Facts, what are those?

Let's refer to them as Newsweak, from now on.

275 posted on 05/15/2005 6:39:32 PM PDT by I Drive Too Fast
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To: stop_fascism
they will start to regain credibility.

Can't imagine who will believe them...that's the funny thing about trust (credibility): once you lose it, it's lost forever...

276 posted on 05/15/2005 6:41:43 PM PDT by lancer (If you are not with us, you are against us!)
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To: Smartass
The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweek that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.

I want to know the name of this...person slimey little twit.

Can we say State Dept.?

277 posted on 05/15/2005 6:46:04 PM PDT by Valin (The glass is 1/32 full! - The incredible optimist)
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To: Pikamax
This issue got some good responses on freedominion.ca as well. I linked up a Policy Review aticle by Robert D. Kaplan entitled: "The Media and Medievalism" that I believe and I presume you will as well be very relevant to this story:

"...As this is an age in which we are bombarded by messages that tell us what to buy and what to think, when one dissects the real elements of power — who has it and, more important during a time of rapid change, who increasingly has it — one is left to conclude bleakly: Ours is not an age of democracy, or an age of terrorism, but an age of mass media, without which the current strain of terrorism would be toothless in any case.

Like the priests of ancient Egypt, the rhetoricians of ancient Greece and Rome, and the theologians of medieval Europe, the media represent a class of bright and ambitious people whose social and economic stature gives them the influence to undermine political authority. Like those prior groups, the media have authentic political power — terrifically magnified by technology — without the bureaucratic accountability that often accompanies it, so that they are never culpable for what they advocate. If, for example, what a particular commentator has recommended turns out badly, the permanent megaphone he wields over the crowd allows him to explain away his position — if not in one article or television appearance, then over several — before changing the subject amid the roaring onrush of new events. Presidents, even if voters ignore their blunders, are at least responsible to history; journalists rarely are. This freedom is key to their irresponsible power."

Here's the Link: http://www.policyreview.org/dec04/kaplan_print.html

278 posted on 05/15/2005 6:48:33 PM PDT by bubman
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To: Valin
They always come up with a short quick apology hoping it will blow over fast. However, they never point a finger to who, or to how, because they must always keep the public barefoot, pregnant and ignorant. For what happened, I don't believe (the person) their covered by First Amendment Rights, and shouldn't be. The USDOJ could be paying them a visit.
279 posted on 05/15/2005 6:53:26 PM PDT by Smartass (Si vis pacem, para bellum - Por el dedo de Dios se escribió)
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To: Smartass

The USDOJ could be paying them a visit.

I don't disagree, but realistically what can the government legally do?


280 posted on 05/15/2005 6:56:26 PM PDT by Valin (The glass is 1/32 full! - The incredible optimist)
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