There's plenty of opportunity to criticize Newsweek for its botched report on Gitmo that touched off days of rioting.
The magazine relied on an unnamed source -- an increasingly controversial if age-old Washington practice -- who turned out not to know what he was talking about.
Newsweek's editors admit they didn't foresee the explosive consequences of reporting that U.S. interrogators had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet to rattle detainees -- it had been reported before, but the magazine quoted a senior government official as saying the incident would be cited in a military report.
That, as it turned out, was like throwing a match on the dry tinder of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. The resulting riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries killed at least 16 people -- making Newsweek's item the deadliest media blunder in recent memory. Little wonder that Editor Mark Whitaker has apologized, and formally retracted the item yesterday.
But the blogosphere has been denouncing Newsweek for far worse than making a terrible mistake. According to some online critics, Newsweek (owned by The Washington Post Co.) was on a crusade to make the military and the U.S. government look bad. In this view, the magazine gave free rein to its anti-war sentiments by denigrating the military and assuming the absolute worst.
In fact, a Texan in my online chat complained of "the seething hatred that the mainstream press has for the military."
Here's why some of that criticism is overstated:
--If Newsweek was on such a crusade, why did it devote all of one half-sentence to the Koran allegations? The whole Periscope item was just 10 sentences, and only a few words involved the flushing-down-the-toilet business.
--Newsweek showed a draft of the item to a senior Pentagon official, who disputed another aspect but not the Koran question. The absence of a denial hardly amounts to confirmation -- that was the same mistake CBS made on the Bush/National Guard story -- but things might have turned out differently if the Pentagon had objected.
--This wasn't the first time such a Koran incident had been alleged. Indeed, we know that some U.S. interrogators have done far worse, as those photographs of prisoners on a leash or a naked pyramid vividly reminded us.
--Extremist elements were obviously using the Newsweek item as an opportunity to whip up anti-American violence.
None of this gets Newsweek off the hook. But the notion that it was an intentional mistake, as opposed to a bad blunder or reckless reliance on a single source, remains unsupported.
