Newsweek capitulates

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker has capitulated to the pressure and retracted the controversial Koran desecration piece. The AP provides the shortened outline of how the story unraveled:

Newsweek had reported in its issue dated May 9 that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that interrogators placed copies of Islam's holy book in washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk.

Whitaker wrote in [an editor's] note to readers [this week] that "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."

Whitaker said in his editor's note that while other news organizations had aired charges of Quran abuse based on the testimony of detainees, the magazine decided to publish a short item after hearing from an unnamed U.S. official that a government probe had found evidence corroborating the charges.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into charges of Quran desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.'"

Whitaker added that the magazine's original source later said he could not be sure he read about the alleged Quran incident in the report Newsweek cited, and that it might have been in another document.

First things first: the initial report could have been sourced better. Michael Isikoff, the principal author of the contentious article, only had the one anonymous official and when the hammer came down, the official waffled. Isikoff got burnt. This was poor, but by no means abhorrent, journalism.

Secondly, and most importantly, the charge that the Koran was flushed hasn't been discredited. Newsweek's source doesn't repudiate the claim. According to the last paragraph above, he just got his referring documents mixed up (!). And, as noted, there's already plenty of other evidence to suggest that mistreatment of the Koran happened in several interrogations.

That prowarriors are using this incident to drum up support for press censorship, while the White House hops on board to wag its finger at the fourth estate, is appalling. These people have no shame. The din of manufactured outrage is sure to drown out any story of significance at least for the next week.