"Media vs. the Military
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 23, 2005; 8:54 AM
The bashing of Newsweek over its horribly handled item on Koran desecration has mushroomed into a sweeping indictment of the media, which some conservatives now accuse of deliberately slandering the military.
Newsweek "wanted the story to be true," says Rush Limbaugh, because the media "have an adversarial relationship with America" and "end up siding with the bad guys."
Some news outlets "magnify every mistake the military makes in order to hammer the Bush administration," says Bill O'Reilly.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page blames "a basic media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam." Columnist Jonah Goldberg decries "the media's unreflective willingness to undermine the war on terror."
Is any of this true? Or has Newsweek's retracted story simply handed the right a new club with which to beat journalists?
Torie Clarke, who was the Pentagon's top spokeswoman during the Iraq war, says: "My gut tells me it's just another element in the general dislike of the mainstream news media that some conservatives have. I don't think the theory that there's an anti-military bias holds up on the whole." If anything, Clarke says, "there is a greater appreciation and respect for what the military does than 10 or 15 years ago" -- thanks in part to the embedding program she pushed in Iraq.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry strongly disagrees, saying there is a "media culture, set during Vietnam," aimed at "exposing wrongdoing and failures of the U.S. military. Instead of tending to give the military the benefit of the doubt, there's a tendency to believe the worst."
Michael Isikoff, the primary author of the Newsweek item, "reflected that culture," Lowry says. "That doesn't mean Mike has anything personal against the military, and it doesn't mean he's not in most circumstances a great reporter. But especially after Abu Ghraib, everyone in the media is panting after every possible prison abuse."
Isikoff was a hero to many on the right when he was breaking stories about Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But when he reported that military investigators had confirmed that an U.S. interrogator at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet -- based on an unnamed source who later backed off the account -- he became a piñata for conservative critics. (Some, including Pat Buchanan, say Newsweek shouldn't have run the item, even if true, because it is too "inflammatory.")
There is little dispute that Newsweek (which is owned by The Washington Post Co.) tarnished its reputation by basing such an explosive story on a single source who, as it turns out, wasn't sure he had seen the allegation in a forthcoming military report. The magazine's two top editors, who never saw the final version of the brief "Periscope" item, clearly failed to consider the possible consequences and were stunned by the rioting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, which claimed 16 lives.
Some analysts see parallels between the Newsweek debacle and Dan Rather's "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on President Bush's National Guard service, in that both took on the administration, both should have been held for further checking and both relied on unnamed sources. But while CBS's source turned out to be an anti-Bush zealot, Newsweek says Isikoff spoke to a senior government official who had been reliable in the past. And while CBS defended the Guard report for 12 days, Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker apologized and said the story was wrong in just over a day.
That hasn't stopped White House, Pentagon and State Department officials from denouncing Newsweek. But presidential spokesman Scott McClellan's insistence that the magazine "help repair the damage" in the Muslim world has triggered a backlash on the left.
"Now it's Newsweek's job to repair the image of the U.S.?" scoffs liberal radio host Stephanie Miller. "It's amazing they want Newsweek to take accountability when no one in the administration has taken accountability for either the unnecessary war or Abu Ghraib.
"This is part of the chilling effect the administration wants to have on the media, an attempt to shut down any further investigative reporting. Most of the media is so scared they'll do anything not to appear liberal."
One other parallel: Some people believe that the Koran desecration, as alleged by a number of detainees, is "likely true," as Miller put it, just as former CBS producer Mary Mapes says the botched National Guard story is still true. The appalling abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib certainly makes seem the Koran incident seem plausible. But as CBS and now Newsweek have learned, believing something could well be true is a long way from journalistically proving it."
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