Painted With Horns That Won't Retract

"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 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.

Assessing Albom

The good news for Mitch Albom is that a Detroit Free Press investigation found no evidence that its star sports columnist had any other episode similar to his April blunder of writing about a basketball game before it happened.

But there were a number of instances, in more than 600 columns reviewed, of Albom lifting quotes from other publications without attribution -- and in some cases making them livelier. Albom told the paper they were "essentially accurate."

In one case, ironically, he lifted a comment by Jayson Blair, who fabricated stories at the New York Times, from the New York Observer. In another, Albom wrote about a Detroit Lions game, complete with postgame comments that his editor now admits made it sound like he was there.

Albom had watched it at home, taking the quotes from TV interviews and Lions releases. Overall, Albom lifted quotes from USA Today, the Detroit News, Rolling Stone, the "Today" show and other outlets -- all in violation of Free Press policy. Albom told the paper his editors approved the practice, which they acknowledged.

Albom, who has privately complained that he was singled out because of his fame as a best-selling author, says by e-mail that he's been "vindicated" and is proud that "no factual inaccuracies" were found. He says the quote attribution policy was "apparently not clear for many writers there" but that now that it is being tightened, he will abide by it.

David Zeman, part of the in-house team that investigated Albom, says the headline -- "Albom Probe Shows No Pattern of Deception" -- was "too soft. The headline led with what he was cleared of rather than what we found in terms of problems." But he credits the editors with publishing the entire article, "including passages that were painful to them."

Missing in Action

Women have made progress in journalism, but when it comes to being cited as news sources, not so much. On the cable news networks, a new study says, just 19 percent cited at least one female source, compared to 53 percent citing at least one man. (On three editions of MSNBC's "Hardball," every guest was a man.)

On the network evening news, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism, 27 percent of stories cited women, while 63 percent cited men. On PBS's "NewsHour," women were cited in 17 percent of reports, men in 59 percent. The best television showing for women was on the network morning shows.

The 16 newspapers studied, in both large and small markets, were the most diverse, with 41 percent of stories citing at least one woman (compared to 88 percent featuring men), and 19 percent citing two or more women. The record on Web stories examined: 36 percent mentioning women, and 89 percent men.

Across the media, the only area where women crossed the 50 percent threshold was in lifestyle stories. They were most likely to be ignored in foreign affairs.