Newsweek Under Fire

Here's the top of my report on the latest back-and-forth :

Newsweek issued a formal retraction yesterday of the flawed story that sparked deadly riots in Afghanistan and other countries, after the magazine came under increasingly sharp criticism from White House, State Department and Pentagon officials.

The magazine's statement retracted its charge that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that an American interrogator at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said he thought the magazine had already "retracted what we think we may have gotten wrong" in an editor's note published Sunday and in media interviews. "We've called it an error," he said. "We've called it a mistake."

But, he said, "it became clear people weren't quite hearing that and were getting hung up" on the semantics.

The May 1 item triggered violent protests last week in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and other countries, in which at least 16 people were killed.

The damage-control efforts by Newsweek followed criticism by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who called it "puzzling" that Newsweek, in his view, had "stopped short of a retraction."

"That story has damaged the image of the United States abroad and damaged the credibility of the media at home," McClellan said in an interview. He said that Americans, including President Bush, "share in the outrage that this report was published in the first place."

Check out the whole thing. Condi and Rummy also weigh in.

Also don't miss the New York Post 's "HOLY SHIITE" cover.

Jeff Jarvis has this stinging critique:

"What a terrible lesson in journalism: about the danger of unnamed sources, about the risk of rushing a story, about the cynicism of gotcha journalism, about the damage a wrong story can do. . . .

"This mistake cost people their lives, put the lives of our soldiers in the Mideast at risk, damaged the American position in the effort to defend itself and spread democracy, and damaged the already tattered reputation of journalism.