« Thoughts On Operation Matador | Main | "Is That What You're Saying Here?" »
May 16, 2005
The Cold Calculus Of A Journalistic Fraud
Wretchard at The Belmont Club delivers a sharp smack to Newsweek over its "journalistic integrity" (hat tip: Bill Roggio):
Their efforts at "confirmation" yielded a denial and a non-denial from Defense officials, but no confirmation. In predicate calculus, Newsweek asserted P. Their attempts at confirmation yielded ~P and Null. Hence they concluded P, which is wrong, wrong and wrong. It is wrong from the pont of view of elementary logic. It would be wrong anywhere, even in the Andromeda Galaxy. But apparently it is right at Newsweek.
The two-facedness of the MSM is again on appalling display. Consider Rathergate and the simpering tributes heaped upon Dan Rather at his retirement: If Rather was as good a journalist as everyone claimed, how then did he fail to stop the obviously bogus story that went out under his leadership? The other explanation was that he was a liar. He's a fraud as a journalist either way.
Likewise, in this case Newsweek will no doubt hide behind its mainstream facade of J-school arrogance; it looks like they will adopt the CBS stratey of rope-a-dope half-apologies. But these kind of major ethical disasters might just begin to have a cumulative effect. Combined with the very real toll in deaths and damage to the reputation of the US, this event might have a far greater backlash against Newsweek than the Newsweek bigwigs are anticipating.
UPDATE: Austin Bay has a great recap of his MSNBC appearance today. He wonders if Newsweek will grit their teeth and conduct an honest and tough investigation, or whether they'll take the CBS/CNN route and do as little as possible. He concludes with a thought that adds to my conclusion above:
I suspect Newsweek thinks this incident will somehow “blow over” and they’ll get by with some slight degree of professional embarrassment. I also suspect no one serving in Afghanistan thinks the “blow over” Newsweek faces in New York in DC is anything like the heat they face in Kabul.
Just so. My wife commented after we watched the coverage on Brit Hume's show, "I wish they could have rounded up the wives of some of the soldiers over there, to see what they think about Newsweek."
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thebernoullieffect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/150
Comments
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/20/05, they printed:
"Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey [an attorney in Washington, D.C.], who interviewed clients late last month. Others said that pills were hidden in their food and that people came to their cells claiming to be their attorneys, to gain information.
"All have been physically abused, and, however you define the term, the treatment of these men crossed the line," [attorney Tom] Wilner said. "There was torture, make no mistake about it."
-----
This was not a new story. It wasn't controversial 4 months ago.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2005/May/12-273892.html?chanlid=washfile
Click on that link. Here's the first paragraph:
"Washington – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
This is getting blown way the hell out of proportion, in no small part by bloggers who want like crazy to break a big story, and are all too happy to impugn that dirty main stream media.
Posted by: Fargus at May 17, 2005 06:18 AM
Quickly, because my computer's acting up:
1) The Enquirer story you quoted is simply repeating detainees charges as relayed by their attornies. The credibility of that kind of report pretty much the same as the Newsweek story.
Anyway the point is not really the reaction of the Muslim world. The story is about terrible journalistic standards. If the story is true I've got no problem with it being on the cover of Newsweek, but I don't think it is.
2) The government article is incomplete: it does state that the protests definitely began in response to the article; it then goes on to say that the subsequent violence was not due to the Newsweek article. Interesting, but there's no explanation.
The gov article does also say, however, that the "guard flushing the Koran" story from Guantanamo could have arisen from a detainee flushing some pages in a deliberate attempt to flood the cells. Judging by the traditional behavior of prisoners everywhere, that sounds perfectly possible. Beware of wishful thinking, indeed.
Posted by: Jeff at May 17, 2005 09:54 AM
