The Bobcat Nation

Just when you thought that journalism was at a new low with the dan rather fake story news....newsweek decided to run a story about United States Troops had desicrated the koran. whats worse, there was no co-oberating story, and the origional source has recanted his story...lives lost because newsweek couldnt bother verifing a story...what a shame

Simple fact that people are willing to give misinformation just to make sure that they don’t get scooped. Really what is 15 lives and numerous injuries? Newsweek has also hurt the US’s reputation, but hell if the story would have been accurate then it would have all been worth it…

Unfortunately, sometimes people don't realize the awesome responsibility that goes with exercising the freedoms that this country has.
I attended a forum many years ago, that had on the panel a very prominent journalist from Bozeman. During the questioning, the discussion turned towards why are inaccuracies that are corrected, only corrected on the "bottom of page two, in small print", when the original article was front-page above the fold material. I don't remember the answer, but I do remember one statement he made in the answer. He said that they had a saying in his TV news department, that "it's only journalism, it's not brain surgery." An audible gasp came up from those attending the forum.
Unfortunately, I feel that all too often this attitude has infected news rooms. I don't think it is wide-spread, but we all need to remember that with our freedoms comes responsibility - whether that freedom is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, etc.

I'm getting off my soap box now....

exactly what pisses me off about this little bit of info is because I need to make a correction in my origional post on this topic: newsweek only apologised, they did not recant this story. i bet you that there is a editor on that bord that is crazy enough to think that there is a segment of population that wont belive the department of defence's version of the story even though if for example it was only a couple of words off from the newsweek story (bac is that you??)

To kind of add to this topic do you think that newsweek should be heald accountable for that article? Mary Mapes and Dan rather were fired from CBS (dont tell me Dan Rather resigned....i bet you there was pressure from cBS for him to resign so it looks good...i mean from the nightly news)....this reporter that created the story caused 15 dead as well as lord knows how many people injured...all because "My best friend heard from his best friends girlfriend that her best friends roomates brother in law's lover heard from somone from the internet that someone in a US army uniform flushed the koran down the toilet"

Hell's Bells wrote:exactly what pisses me off about this little bit of info is because I need to make a correction in my origional post on this topic: newsweek only apologised, they did not recant this story. i bet you that there is a editor on that bord that is crazy enough to think that there is a segment of population that wont belive the department of defence's version of the story even though if for example it was only a couple of words off from the newsweek story (bac is that you??)

To kind of add to this topic do you think that newsweek should be heald accountable for that article? Mary Mapes and Dan rather were fired from CBS (dont tell me Dan Rather resigned....i bet you there was pressure from cBS for him to resign so it looks good...i mean from the nightly news)....this reporter that created the story caused 15 dead as well as lord knows how many people injured...all because "My best friend heard from his best friends girlfriend that her best friends roomates brother in law's lover heard from somone from the internet that someone in a US army uniform flushed the koran down the toilet"

I don't have any idea what you are asking me, but I will assume that you are suggesting that I am some sort of nut who is in favor of reporting that has no substantiation. Let me assure you that I am not. If you will recall, I have been the one standing up for the whole idea of supporting ideas and statements with facts as opposed to conjecture and propoganda, remember?

That should make my position on this topic quite easy to figure out (hint: I am against reporting false statements).

Hell's Bells wrote:exactly what pisses me off about this little bit of info is because I need to make a correction in my origional post on this topic: newsweek only apologised, they did not recant this story.

I hate to be a stickler for...uh...accuracy (irony noted), but they actually did recant the story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/newsweek_quran

Grizlaw wrote:

Hell's Bells wrote:exactly what pisses me off about this little bit of info is because I need to make a correction in my origional post on this topic: newsweek only apologised, they did not recant this story.

I hate to be a stickler for...uh...accuracy (irony noted), but they actually did recant the story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/newsweek_quran

as of the time of my last post there was no retraction

Hell's Bells wrote:
as of the time of my last post there was no retraction

I know; I was just being a pain in the @ss. They announced that they were recanting yesterday afternoon.

As to the greater question -- should Newsweek be held accountable for the error? I guess that depends on what you mean. They made a mistake; and they will certainly be held accountable in the court of public opinion, and the individuals who were responsible for the error may face reprisals if deemed appropriate.

Beyond that, I'm not sure that any punishment is appropriate for Newsweek. I was thinking about the question of whether it is Newsweek's "fault" that this riot occurred, and I think I have come to the conclusion (in my mind, anyway) that it is not their fault -- it is the fault of those who were rioting.

I understand that desecration of the Koran is very offensive in the Muslim religion. That being the case, I think an appropriate question is: Why aren't Muslims in THIS country rioting and killing people in response to Newsweek's story? I am sure that Muslims here are just as disgusted by the alleged conduct as Muslims in Afghanistan are, so why is it that in Afghanistan they react with riots and violence, and not here? I think we all know the answer to that question.

My point is: Newsweek made a mistake, and they should be held accountable for that mistake -- however, they should NOT be held accountable for the fact that the people of Afghanistan are so uncivilized that they respond to a news report with rioting and violence.

Grizlaw wrote: My point is: Newsweek made a mistake, and they should be held accountable for that mistake -- however, they should NOT be held accountable for the fact that the people of Afghanistan are so uncivilized that they respond to a news report with rioting and violence.

I can't believe that I agree with you on something...

Some of the responses could--and are--applied to our "civilized" behavior in the wake of news reporting. Rodney King, the Boston riots were not that long ago. We gloss over the number of homicides in this country and fixate on Iraqi casualties and injuries. What would happen if the American public knew how lethal small cannisters of biological agents dispersed in our large population centers...well we do, we just don't want to discuss that. We'd rather see military bombs. Anyone remember the SARS epidemic in China?

mquast53000 wrote:

Grizlaw wrote: My point is: Newsweek made a mistake, and they should be held accountable for that mistake -- however, they should NOT be held accountable for the fact that the people of Afghanistan are so uncivilized that they respond to a news report with rioting and violence.

I can't believe that I agree with you on something...

Hmm...thanks, I guess.

You probably agree with me on a lot of things, actually. My views are pretty middle of the road -- my conservative friends tell me that I'm a liberal, and my liberal friends tell me that I'm a staunch conservative; it all depends on what issue we're discussing. So my guess is that you probably agree with me (and disagree with me) on a lot of issues.

Grizlaw wrote:

Hell's Bells wrote:
as of the time of my last post there was no retraction

I know; I was just being a pain in the @ss. They announced that they were recanting yesterday afternoon.

As to the greater question -- should Newsweek be held accountable for the error? I guess that depends on what you mean. They made a mistake; and they will certainly be held accountable in the court of public opinion, and the individuals who were responsible for the error may face reprisals if deemed appropriate.

Beyond that, I'm not sure that any punishment is appropriate for Newsweek. I was thinking about the question of whether it is Newsweek's "fault" that this riot occurred, and I think I have come to the conclusion (in my mind, anyway) that it is not their fault -- it is the fault of those who were rioting.

I understand that desecration of the Koran is very offensive in the Muslim religion. That being the case, I think an appropriate question is: Why aren't Muslims in THIS country rioting and killing people in response to Newsweek's story? I am sure that Muslims here are just as disgusted by the alleged conduct as Muslims in Afghanistan are, so why is it that in Afghanistan they react with riots and violence, and not here? I think we all know the answer to that question.

My point is: Newsweek made a mistake, and they should be held accountable for that mistake -- however, they should NOT be held accountable for the fact that the people of Afghanistan are so uncivilized that they respond to a news report with rioting and violence.

was it a mistake? Grizlaw in lawschool I bet that if you wrote a paper or disertation about a subject and used the same type of source that isacoff (sp??) used that you would get laughed out of class...or school...i bet the same thing would happen to a freshmen gen.studies major. This is yellow journalism at its best, or worse. What scares me, however, is that there is a movement out there to punish newsweek, which would be sensorship and unamerican.

Souldn't they have thought about the responce all the muslim nations would have given had somthing like this got published? Most of the people rioting think that newsweek was pressued into retracting the story. As a matter of fact some of them want whomever desicrated the koran to be handed over so he can get the death penalty.

If you want a full range of opinions on the Newsweek mistake/error in judgment/conspiracy to get Bush/whatever, this is a good source:

http://slate.com/id/2118880/

I'm not sure that many academic programs allow the use of unnamed sources, so Grizlaw probably would have received some scorn for citing "an unnamed code section" as support of his assertions on one of his position papers. Journalism, for better or for worse, isn't as strict as academia in this regard, and the use of unnamed sources is commonplace (which I actually dislike immensely).

On the flipside, if it was as strict as academia, the conservatives wouldn't have had the pleasure of reading about the thousands of half-baked scandal allegations about Clinton. It's the risks and rewards of a free press.

Unfortunately, the stakes were a bit higher on the Newsweek story. When someone made a mistake about Clinton, the only side effect was unnecessarily arousing a bunch of American conservatives, which didn't lead to violence and probably even served as an aphrodisiac in many cases. As Grizlaw noted, the Islamacist conservatives are a little less restrained in their use of violence to express themselves.

But the Clinton era was just another example of selective reporting, that is, we didn't need to know everything going on. It wasn't until the final stages of their administration that we became aware as a country that the strategic oil reserve was virtually empty, that we found much more than we should have ever allowed our kids to see in and around the ethnic cleaned former Yugo area...I get tired of feeling like a mushroom at times and the slant the media owners are allowed to spin the real news.

Hell's Bells wrote:Souldn't they have thought about the responce all the muslim nations would have given had somthing like this got published? Most of the people rioting think that newsweek was pressued into retracting the story. As a matter of fact some of them want whomever desicrated the koran to be handed over so he can get the death penalty.

Here's a question for you:

The reason why this story is creating scandal is because the allegations turned out not to be properly substantiated (which is not quite the same as saying the alleged events did not happen, by the way). We all agree that this allegation should not have been published, on those grounds.

Question: what if the allegations had been properly substantiated? Your response from above suggests that you think Newsweek should not have published the allegations, even if they were true and properly substantiated, on the basis that "they should have thought about the response" of the Muslim nations. Doesn't that rationale hold just as true for allegations that are substantiated as for those that are not? After all, the riot in Afghanistan occurred because the citizens there believed the allegations, not because they were outraged that Newsweek did not obtain proper corroboration before publishing.

If that's your argument, then frankly, I think it starts us down a very scary path. In my view, if the allegations were true and substantiated (which Newsweek, rightly or wrongly, believed them to be when they published them), then they should be published, regardless of how anyone might react to them. Any other result, and "right to a free press" is as worthless as the paper on which it is printed.

Wasn't it printed on Hemp?
Oops off the subject

shocked and dismayed, but agree with Grizlaw. Newsweek is at fault for publishing the inaccurate story, but those who rioted are responsible for their own actions. Let's not pass the buck, nobody can make somebody else do something they are unwilling to do. I can't even get my 5 year old to do what i tell him, I doubt a Newsweek article can make somebody else cause blood shed if they weren't already wanting to do so.

-rebecca

Do you really want all the facts and secrets of the government made public? That could be as terrifying as the spin we now get as to what is newsworthy, and perhaps it would be better in light of what the rest of the world thinks of us to carefully consider the culture of the rest of the world. We're rather arrogant and don't do a very good job when it comes to considering others feelings and the possible consequences of our actions, especially when it comes to reporting.

briannell wrote:shocked and dismayed, but agree with Grizlaw. Newsweek is at fault for publishing the inaccurate story, but those who rioted are responsible for their own actions. Let's not pass the buck, nobody can make somebody else do something they are unwilling to do. I can't even get my 5 year old to do what i tell him, I doubt a Newsweek article can make somebody else cause blood shed if they weren't already wanting to do so.

-rebecca

You will take me to Jabba, now.

Cat Grad wrote:Do you really want all the facts and secrets of the government made public?

Yeah -- because that's exactly what I said in my post, isn't it...