The 'Scoop' Heard 'Round the World. Sadly.

By the same token, as Brian Montopoli noted in a CJR Daily posting, news outlets reported that Newsweek had issued a full retraction. In fact, the magazine only retracted the claim that a particular Southern Command report had confirmed the Koran abuse. The magazine's source had evidently held fast to the statement that military investigators confirmed the Koran incident, but in some other document. It appears that Newsweek is quietly standing by the inflammatory heart of its story and issued a non-retraction retraction. I guess this was just a little too intricate for reporters to deal with -- or too risky, as the White House denied Koran-flushing with press-devouring intensity.

Rumors and half-truths are most likely to take on the guise of solid fact when there is a dearth of information about a compelling topic. Twenty-four-hour cable news has made the problem far worse, especially when a compelling story is breaking and the cable news channels feel obliged to cover it around the clock, with little of substance to report. That was the situation during much of the 2002 Beltway sniper crisis.

And the solution was bogus news -- interviews with profilers, who told us to be on the lookout for an angry, middle-aged white man in a white van. That information ceased to be useful once police had arrested two African American males in a blue Chevrolet Caprice, but while we were still in suspense, it was reassuring to believe that the profilers were on top of the case.

On top of it all, journalists must deal with an administration whose penchant for secrecy has grown only stronger since 9/11. For instance, the administration has tried to impose a news blackout on its archipelago of prisons for terror suspects. Journalists know virtually nothing about what goes on inside them, so naturally, they play up what little comes their way.

When released Guantanamo detainees declared months ago that they had seen interrogators put Korans in toilets, media gave their claims wide and prominent circulation, even though it was impossible to verify them. It seems that if you can't report solid facts, you can at least report assertions. It was their claims that helped make the Newsweek story seem plausible. Unfortunately, many in the audience regard unverified assertions as gospel, just as sepoys knew with certainty that the British had defiled their cartridges.

Given the staggering advances in communications technology since the Indian mutiny, it's sobering to realize how difficult it remains to cut through rumor with steely, unswerving fact. We reach so many of our judgments in fog and depend on journalists like my old colleague Isikoff to help us see more clearly. So take your lumps, Mike, then go back out and nail this story down.

Author's e-mail:chanson@jmail.umd.edu

Chris Hanson, a former reporter for the Washington Star, Reuters and Hearst newspapers, teaches at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.