Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (31857)	5/17/2005 7:39:10 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

They retracted when it became apparent they ran the story without backup.....dope.

To: American Spirit who wrote (31857)	5/17/2005 8:12:30 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

The Two Faces of Anti-Americanism . . . RealClearPolitics ^ / May 17, 2005 / Dennis Prager Newsweek magazine published a scoop last week. Based on an unnamed source, Newsweek informed the world that American interrogators of suspected Islamic terrorists at Guantanamo Bay had flushed pages of the Koran down a toilet. If this were true, the interrogators would be both morally wrong and stupid. The words of the Koran and the pages on which they are written are considered intrinsically holy to Muslims. As it happens, it was not true. Like Dan Rather and CBS News, Newsweek put politics and craving a scoop ahead of truth, not to mention ahead of America's security. As I said on my radio show days before Newsweek revealed that its report was baseless, even if the report were true, the magazine was highly irresponsible when it published the report. It could have only one effect: inflaming the wrath of hundreds of millions of Muslims against America. If an American interrogator of Japanese prisoners desecrated the most sacred Japanese symbols during World War II, it is inconceivable that any American media would have published this information. While American news media were just as interested in scoops in 1944 as they are now, they also had a belief that when America was at war, publishing information injurious to America and especially to its troops was unthinkable. Such a value is not only not honored by today's news media, the opposite is more likely the case. The mainstream media oppose the war in Iraq and loathe the Bush administration. Whatever weakens the war effort and embarrasses the president raises a news source's prestige among its domestic, and especially foreign, peers. Newsweek is directly responsible for the deaths of innocents and for damaging America. As a typical member of the American news media, Newsweek's primary loyalties are to profits and to its political/social agenda. We are very fortunate that in America, at least, we now have talk radio and the Internet; the mainstream news media are no longer Americans' only sources of news. Europe and the rest of the world still rely almost exclusively on news media for their understanding of the world, which is a major reason for their anti-Americanism. And now a word about the rioters. They have desecrated their religion and their holy text far more than the alleged flushers of Koranic pages. Did any Buddhists riot and murder when the Taliban Muslims blew up the irreplaceable giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? Did any Christians riot and murder when an "artist" produced "Piss Christ" -- a crucifix immersed in a jar of the "artist's" urine? When all Christian services and even the wearing of a cross were banned in Saudi Arabia? When Christians are murdered while at prayer in churches by Muslims in Pakistan? Have any Jews rioted in all the years since it was revealed that Jordanian Muslims used Jewish tombstones in Old Jerusalem as latrines? Or after Palestinians destroyed Joseph's Tomb in 2000 and set fire to the rebuilt tomb in 2003? It is quite remarkable that many Muslims believe that an American interrogator flushing pages of the Koran is worthy of rioting, but all the torture, slaughter, terror and mass murder done by Muslims in the name of the Koran are unworthy of even a peaceful protest. Nevertheless, one will have to search extensively for any editorials condemning these primitives in the Western press, let alone in the Muslim press. This is because moral expectations of Muslims are lower than those of other religious groups. Behavior that would be held in contempt if engaged in by Christians or Jews is not only not condemned, it is frequently "understood" when done by Muslims. That, not phony reports about an American desecrating Koranic pages, should really upset Muslims. It won't. Just as the CBS and Newsweek debacles won't upset the American news media. The lowest of the Muslim world and the elite of the Western world: Anti-Americanism makes strange bedfellows.

To: American Spirit who wrote (31857)	5/17/2005 8:30:45 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

The News about Newsweek What we all might say in behalf of Dan Rather is that last year's George Bush/National Guard fable, however shabbily conceived and accomplished, didn't get anyone killed. No one can say such a thing about Newsweek's Guantanamo/Koran story, which as of May 16 had gotten at least 17 rioters killed here and there -- while damaging U.S. relations with the Islamic world in ways unknowable. All this on account of one short report in the magazine's "Periscope" section of May 9 -- a report played up expertly by Islamist agitators; to wit, that "in an attempt to rattle" terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. interrogators "flushed a Qur'an [as Newsweek ingratiatingly spelled 'Koran'] down a toilet." Next thing we knew, students in the Afghan capital of Kabul were burning an American flag, chanting "Death to America," and fanning out to attack international relief agencies and beat up their staffs. In the town of Khogyani, police fired into a crowd of hundreds. At last came Newsweek's lame apology. The source for the story -- "a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter" -- couldn't, um, be sure he/she had been right after all; therefore, the magazine regretted that "we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence," etc. Well, you win some, you lose some ... You sure do, all of us journalists (however grand and over-advertised) being humans as well as journalists. We all make mistakes. Some of us start as early as possible. (Ah, the stories I could tell from very personal experience!) Why the fuss, then, over the Koran story? Well, partly, of course, on account of the deaths the story caused directly, and the damage it continues to inflict on the interests of the United States. Can that be all, though? I think we see in the cold, casual dissection of American tactics in the terror war the kind of performance we have come to expect of the U.S. media. Plenty of Americans no longer regard the media as automatically, reflexively, on America's side in foreign contests. Where's the quaint presumption nowadays that the people who tell the stories, and those who view or read them, share an interest in their country's success? You hope for that presumption, and sometimes you find it. Disturbingly often what you find instead is liberal-tilting American reporters covering American war efforts with the same critical "detachment" Al Jazeera might bring to the task. Alas, America's reporting establishment, like its academic and cultural establishments, is hugely, overwhelmingly "blue state." It tends not to trust those who act in behalf of an administration -- George W. Bush's -- whose policies they fault almost across the board. Yes, one can too easily generalize about these things. There has been first-rate reporting -- and first-rate, pro-American soldier reporting -- about Iraq. It should be added that our honorable profession, with its First Amendment commission, is in the news business, not the business of shilling for whoever happens to run the government at the moment. ... in part townhall.com