Richard Cohen: "Where is the retraction from Cheney?"

[paineinthearse]

Newsweek's Mistakes

By Richard Cohen

Friday, May 20, 2005; Page A21

The first reaction I saw to Newsweek's retraction of that now-famous item came from out of the blogosphere -- someone attributing the mistake to the magazine's "antiwar reporting." The headline -- just in case you missed the point -- was "Newsweek's Antiwar Crusade Kills," and though the piece marshaled many facts, it came to the wrong conclusion. Newsweek, I am here to tell you, simply made a mistake. Well, actually two. The first was the item itself, which was apparently incorrect and also not appreciated for its cultural punch. No one seemed to understand that when you allege that the Koran had been flushed down a toilet, it might trigger riots in the Muslim world. And then the magazine failed to issue a full-throated retraction and grovel in the manner expected from any institution that gets something wrong, especially the media. The rules for this sort of thing, as Dan Rather can attest, require total abasement, an approximation of what Henry II did after the murder of Thomas Becket (1170). Only a shortage of monks -- 80 of them flogged the king -- makes this an impractical precedent.

By Tuesday the critical blogs had been joined by the Wall Street Journal. It opined that the error stemmed from the press's -- and Newsweek's -- basic "mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam." Here the Journal has a point, but it makes it sound as if that mistrust is totally unearned. The lies of Vietnam -- beginning with the murky cause for the war, the Gulf of Tonkin incident -- were legion and well documented. Had reporters not taken a lesson from all this -- had we not learned something from the revelations of the Pentagon Papers and the later confessions of Robert McNamara -- then we would truly be unqualified to practice our profession. Skepticism is to journalists what faith is to the clergy. I confess I've detected no overall antiwar slant in Newsweek, and I offer the fact -- not that it will matter much to its critics -- that the magazine is owned by The Washington Post Co., and the editorial page of its namesake newspaper has supported the war. Whatever the case, I concede that I sometimes detect a whiff of anti-military cynicism in the press. But that's almost instantly justified by something like the official report this month that the Army covered up the true cause of Pat Tillman's death. He was not, as we were originally told, killed by the enemy in Afghanistan. He was the victim of U.S. fire.

Who knew this? Well, from the report itself, it seems just about everyone in the chain of command, including the theater commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid. Yet he and others allowed the Army to announce a fictitious account of Tillman's death that exaggerated his role and lied about how he was killed. You can understand why. Tillman was -- he really was -- a hero, a remarkable role model. He had walked away from a huge contract to play pro football and, along with his brother, enlisted in the Army. No doubt, it was hard to admit that his life had been taken accidentally, maybe negligently. Still, it was the truth, and the truth is what we expect from our government. I will spare you any harangue today about the mistakes and lies that got us into Iraq in the first place. Suffice it to say that for the White House and the Pentagon to come down on Newsweek for making a mistake is the height of hypocrisy.

Where, just for starters, is the retraction from Dick Cheney, who said that Iraq had "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program? Where are the right-wing bloggers insisting he do so? And where, when it comes to such a touching sensitivity to the feelings of the Muslim world, was the conservative objection to the mad screeds of Ann Coulter, who wrote right after the Sept. 11 attacks, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"? The National Review subsequently dropped her and virtually pronounced her unbalanced -- but she has been adopted by right-wingers everywhere. We learn that no institution is infallible -- not the church, not government, not sports, not schools, not business and not, of course, the media. Newsweek made a mistake. It must find out why and how it happened, but if it continues to do hard, edgy reporting, it will uncover major news and, in time, make the occasional, inevitable mistake. Otherwise Newsweek will not be doing its job -- and that would be the biggest mistake of all.

[paineinthearse]

1. AFP article that quotes Cohen

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050522/ts_alt_afp/uspoliticskoranislam_050522204013

Bush administration accused of hypocrisy over Newsweek, Koran allegations Sun May 22, 4:40 PM ET

The US government, which has called Newsweek magazine to account over a discredited article alleging US soldiers desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay military base, should try and clean up its own act, some politicians and US commentators say. Critics remind the US administration of how it used imprecise information itself to justify the war in Iraq, and point out what they see as unconvincing inquiries into other alleged misdeeds at Guantanamo and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where serious abuses of prisoners occurred last year.

The State Department called the Newsweek article, which set off deadly violence, "appalling," and liberally mentioned the "very major problem" caused to Washington in the Muslim world. After Newsweek said it was retracting the story, the White House urged it to do something more. Other US officials also referred to the story as "irresponsible" and "demonstrably false." The article sparked anti-US protests in Afghanistan and other countries which left at least 14 people dead. Citing an unidentified US official, the article had claimed a probe into allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo found interrogators had thrown a Koran into a toilet to upset Muslim prisoners.

Some have criticized the Bush administration for trying to make political hay with the retraction, and suggest the administration has no good reason to be acting so virtuous. "The pot is calling the kettle black," said Pete Stark, a Democratic Representative from California. "The administration is chastising Newsweek magazine for a story containing a fact that turned out to be false. This is the same administration that lied to the Congress, the United Nations and the American people by fabricating reasons to send us to war."

"For the White House and the Pentagon to come down on Newsweek for making a mistake is the height of hypocrisy," wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. "Where, just for starters, is the retraction from (US Vice President) Dick Cheney, who said that Iraq had 'reconstituted' its nuclear weapon program?"

more.....

[unhappycamper]

2. This is old news. Move along now, nothing to see here.

Sometimes I'm convinced the average IQ of this country is around 7. They all have ADD & are chained to their TV sets.



edit for typo: duh

[paineinthearse]

3. You have a future with the NY Times!

They need to change their motto from "All the news that's fit to print" to "All the news in the past 30 nanoseconds that we judge fit to print".