I hate to jump in on a discussion that has already been going on for awhile, because perhaps there is more recent information that I haven't heard. I definitely didn't hear about the relationship of tuna sandwiches to any of this. But what I did read in an article by Howard Kurtz of the LA Times-Washington Post news service in this morning's paper, makes it very unclear (to me) why Newsweek is getting such a huge amount of blame for the story.
First, the source for MIchael Isikoff's piece was a "senior U.S. government official." This description covers a fairly small number of people--has anyone written a piece about who is on that short list? These are generally reputable sources, and not much would get out into the news if it weren't for credible anonymous sources. Second, the Pentagon read the piece before it was published and did not challenge the allegation, although it did challenge something unrelated. Third, Pentagon officials raised no objections to the story for a week after it was published, until it was translated by Arab media outlets and led to the rioting.
Newsweek and other news magazines rely heavily on senior U.S. government officials, who they deal with over long periods of time and with whom they develop trusting working relationships. If I had been a Newsweek editor, knowing that the Pentagon had reviewed the article, I would have felt confident in going to print with it.
It really seems that the Pentagon is responsible by not carefully reviewing the article, and the senior U.S. government source should not have revealed the information if he was not confident it was true. I am having a lot of trouble holding Newsweek responsible at all. It looks like our government screwed up big time and was looking for a scapegoat in Newsweek. We still are not sure that this incident did not happen. There have been plenty of obscenities and atrocities at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, including (at Guantanamo)scantily clad female interrogators acting seductively towards Muslim prisoners and rubbing what they claimed was menstrual blood on them, a huge violation of their manhood in Muslim culture. So certainly we have been guilty of using anti-Muslim acts as a strategy to debase these prisoners and get information from them. Whether it happened or not, it certainly is plausible that someone could have flushed a Quoran down a toilet.
Did I miss something here that makes Newsweek more culpable, perhaps? |
