Newsweek Lied, People Died

Newsweek ADMITTED they did not do a good enough job in verifying the facts. You need MORE THAN ONE SOURCE to go forward with that kind of story. They failed miserably.

I want investgative journalists to VERIFY THE FACTS and not rush to press. Newsweek does not know the TRUTH in this matter, they have a suspision. You do NOT go to press based upon "I hope we got it right!"

Newsweek's version of this story has varied from the others over the last two years - ones in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and British and Russian news organizations - only in that it quoted a government source who now says he didn't have firsthand knowledge of whether or not the investigation took place (oops, sorry, shoulda mentioned that, buh-bye). ...

Whatever I smell comes from this odd sequence of events: Newsweek gets blasted by the White House, apologizes over the weekend but doesn't retract its story. Then McClellan offers his Journalism 101 outdoor seminar and blasts the magazine further. Finally, just before 5 PM Monday, the Dan Rather drama replaying itself in its collective corporate mind, Newsweek retracts.

I'm always warning about the logical fallacy - the illusion that just because one event follows another, the latter must have necessarily caused the former. But when I wondered tonight on Countdown if it applied here, Craig Crawford reassured me. "The dots connect."

[.........................]

Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The way Craig Crawford reconstructed it, this one went similarly to the way the Killian Memos story evolved at the White House. The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet - or has its proxies do it for them.

That's beyond shameful. It's treasonous.

It's also not very smart. While places like the Fox News Channel (which, only today, I finally recognized - it's the newscast perpetually running on the giant video screens in the movie "1984") ask how many heads should roll at Newsweek, it forgets in its fervor that both the story and the phony controversy around it are not so cut-and-dried this time.

Firstly, the principal reporter on the Gitmo story was Michael Isikoff - "Spikey" in a different lifetime; Linda Tripp's favorite journalist, and one of the ten people most responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Spikey isn't just a hero to the Right - the Right owes him. Ultimately, though, the administration may have effected its biggest mistake over this saga, in making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs look like a liar or naïf, just to draw a little blood out of Newsweek's hide. Either way - and also for that tasteless, soul-less conclusion that deaths in Afghanistan should be lain at the magazine's doorstep - Scott McClellan should resign. The expiration on his carton full of blank-eyed bully-collaborator act passed this afternoon as he sat reeling off those holier-than-thou remarks. Ah, that's what I smelled.

At first I thought this would be a great event to bring both sides together. Apparently I over rated the event.

Quote:

Drinking again???

This has NOTHING to do with drinking! And, since I certainly do not have any kind of drinking problem....are you factually innacurate? Are you lying? Are you being arrogant?

Quote:

This has NOTHING to do with Bush. This has everyting to do with Journalism 101. VERIFY THE FACTS!!!

Did you verify your facts woiyo?

You provide very weak and emotional arguements and still expect to be taken seriously.

And what was that being debated just a page or so ago about the present administration lying to the people? All day long.

Ticomaya wrote:

Quote:

And what was Newsweeks intent if it wasn't an intense desire to publish a story that would embarrass the Bush Administration? I don't think they lied any more than Bush lied. If they knew the story was false, however, then they lied. If they just weren't sure, and were only relying on an unnamed "senior government official, it was just sloppy reporting, which calls into question their journalistic standards.

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If George W. Bush knew the story about WMD's was false, however, then he lied. If Bush just wasn't sure, and was only relying on an unnamed "senior government official, it was just sloppy leadership, which calls into question his leadership standards.

In contrast, Newsweeks publishing the story was not intended to ferret out the truth and safeguard the nation. It was intended to try and embarrass the Bush Administration.

But surely you saw that distinction.

In which I get really angry and yell a lot

So now there's a bunch of right-wingers who are pitching the desecrated Koran riot story with the line "Newsweek Lied, People Died."

Get it? It's funny, because it's making fun of what all the anti-war people said when 1,700 Americans were killed based on lies they were warned about but didn't listen to. What, don't you have a ******* sense of humor?

This isn't even not caring. It's beyond not caring. It's taking pride in not caring.

To sit there, and act as if the soldiers were being treated as liberators and loved without anger until Newsweek came in and screwed it all up- I mean, seriously. Why not just go up to an American serviceman, kick him in the genitals, and then take a **** into his mouth. That's about an equal amount of respect you would have to have for the troops to pass one off like that. American soldiers aren't dying in Iraq because Newsweek printed a bad article. American soldiers are dying in Iraq because American soldiers are in Iraq, you ******* lunatics.

1,700 dead, for the very reason the Bush White House used today to attack a perceived "enemy:"

McClellan complained that the story was "based on a single anonymous source who could not personally substantiate the allegation that was made."
"The report has had serious consequences," he said. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."

There is absolutely no way Scott McClellan doesn't know what he's saying. There's no way the conservative bloggers don't. That they actually write weblogs indicates the minimum motor and cognitive skills necessary to comprehend the blood-soaked hypocrisy of a statement as devoid of basic human dignity as that.

A faulty report. Unreliable sources. People have died. And who do they want to resign? The editors of Newsweek.

How is that excusable? How is that even ******* forgivable? And how the hell do people like Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg sleep at night?


Posted by August J. Pollak at 04:25 PM

Tico,
Do you have proof that Newsweek's intention was to try and embarrass the Bush Administration?

After all, Newsweek would have more to lose that a little embarrassment to a president who can quite capably embarrass himself with very little effort.

May 17, 2005, 8:05 a.m.
The Newsweek Riots
A telling error.

My point is only that a statement that later turns out to be false is not much of an indication that the speaker was lying. It would be very odd if the president were not looking at intelligence reports in the run up to making war. It seems likely that he was, does it not?

Intrepid wrote:

And, what is the range of a SCUD missle?

As for the selection of Iraqi missiles I cited, I certainly never claimed that the SCUD had the requisite range. My point was that since Iraq did have missile development programs, the idea that they were making progress was not implausible.