Newsweek Botches Koran Desecration Story

Newsweek reported in last week’ issue that US jailers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a Koran down the toilet to try to annoy their Fascislamic prisoners. The report set off riots in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan in which people got killed. And it turns out, the story wasn’t true, and the magazine has retracted it. Unfortunately, the magazine’s credibility is about as dead as a few of the protesters.

In journalism, as in politics and diplomacy, the only commodity one truly possesses is credibility. Inaccuracies, hidden agendas and outright lies don’t work in the long run; once the currency of truth is debased, it doesn’t come back.

Newsweek violated the basic rules of journalism (which do really exist, and which exist for good reasons) in its report. Citing a single source, and an anonymous one at that, the article should never have made it passed the copy editor. The team of Woodward and Bernstein broke the Watergate story on the basis of two sources, and the Washington Post relies on three sources these days. That doesn’t mean that a reporter can’t be duped, nor does it mean that some stories shouldn’t be pursued until another source turns up. All it means is that the likelihood of truth and accuracy goes up, and one becomes more and more reliable as a source of news to the public.

The White House, feeling the heat for its Guantanamo black hole, jumped all over Newsweek, but couldn’t even get that right. While Scott McClellan said the riots were about the Newsweek story, General Richard Myers said the riots were not about the desecration story at all. Someone is off message here.

Even more horrific was Mr. McClellan’s statement "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not...The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged." Had a single weapon of mass destruction been found in Iraq, the odor brazen hypocrisy would not be quite so intense.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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