Newsweek Apologizes

[Snowden]

washingtonpost.com
Newsweek Apologizes
Inaccurate Report on Koran Led to Riots


By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 16, 2005; A01


Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees that triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 15 people died.

Editor Mark Whitaker expressed regret over the item in the magazine's "Periscope" section, saying it was based on a confidential source -- a "senior U.S. government official" -- who now says he is not sure whether the story is true.

The deadly consequences of the May 1 report, and its reliance on the unnamed source, have sparked considerable anger at the Pentagon. Spokesman Bryan Whitman called Newsweek's report "irresponsible" and "demonstrably false," saying the magazine "hid behind anonymous sources which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage that they have done to this nation or those who were viciously attacked by those false allegations."

Whitaker said last night that "whatever facts we got wrong, we apologize for. I've expressed regret for the loss of life and the violence that put American troops in harm's way. I'm getting a lot of angry e-mail about that, and I understand it."

The report, in the issue dated May 9, said U.S. military investigators had found that American interrogators at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran, the sacred Muslim text, down a toilet. A week later, when newspapers in Afghanistan and Pakistan picked up the item, it sparked anti-American demonstrations in the Afghan city of Jalalabad in which four protesters were killed and more than 60 injured. About a dozen more protesters were killed in the following days when the demonstrations spread across Afghanistan and to Pakistan and other countries.

"There had been previous reports about the Koran being defiled, but they always seemed to be rumors or allegations made by sources without evidence," Whitaker said, referring to reporting by British and Russian news agencies and by the Qatar-based satellite network al-Jazeera. The Washington Post, whose parent company owns Newsweek, reported a similar account in March 2003, attributing it to a group of former detainees. "The fact that a knowledgeable source within the U.S. government was telling us the government itself had knowledge of this was newsworthy," Whitaker said in an interview.

He said that a senior Pentagon official, for reasons that "are still a little mysterious to us," had declined to comment after Newsweek correspondent John Barry showed him a draft before the item was published and asked, "Is this accurate or not?" Whitaker added that the magazine would have held off had military spokesmen made such a request. That official "lacked detailed knowledge" of the investigative report, Newsweek now says. Whitaker said Pentagon officials raised no objection to the story for 11 days after it was published, until it was translated by some Arab media outlets and led to the rioting.

The item was principally reported by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek's veteran investigative reporter. "Obviously we all feel horrible about what flowed from this, but it's important to remember there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here," he said. "We relied on sources we had every reason to trust and gave the Pentagon ample opportunity to comment. . . . We're going to continue to investigate what remains a very murky situation."

Isikoff, a former Post reporter, gained national attention in 1998 when the magazine held his report on an independent counsel's investigation of Monica S. Lewinsky's relationship with President Bill Clinton. More recently, Isikoff and Barry won an Overseas Press Club award for their reporting on Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

The 10-sentence item said an upcoming report by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami was "expected" to include the alleged Koran incident -- the subject of only one sentence -- among various abusive techniques used "to rattle suspects" at Guantanamo. Since then, Pentagon officials and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said investigators found "no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration," as Whitman put it.

On Saturday, when Isikoff reached his original source, the magazine said, the official "could no longer be sure" that the Koran allegation "had surfaced" in the SouthCom investigation.

"Just as citizens," Whitaker said, "we feel badly about the fact that there's been a rash of violence. . . . Clearly, that was not our intent in publishing what we thought was a solid news item."

But critics are already pouncing on the story as the latest in a high-profile series of media blunders at such respected news organizations as the New York Times, USA Today and CBS News. In this case, the consequences -- deadly riots -- were far more serious than a breach of journalistic ethics.

But while the Pentagon is disputing the Koran incident, U.S. officials have confirmed numerous reports by detainees, especially at Abu Ghraib, about guards attempting to humiliate them with tactics that violate religious taboos of the Muslim faith. A senior Pentagon official has confirmed reports that female interrogators rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes, touched them provocatively and pretended to spread menstrual blood on them. The Newsweek item that triggered the violence also said the forthcoming report would describe "one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee's hair and sat on the detainee's lap."

The intensity of the anti-American riots, fueled in part by outraged Muslim clerics and radio broadcasts by elements of the ousted Taliban regime, took many Western analysts by surprise. Desecrating the Koran is punishable by death in some Muslim countries. Newsweek reported yesterday that agitators opposed to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai had seized on the report to foment violence.

About 500 Islamic scholars meeting in the northern Afghan province of Badakshan, where protests were held last week, passed a resolution yesterday urging a U.S. investigation of the Newsweek report, according to wire service accounts.

Interviews with several people in the province yielded differing views of the controversy. Javed Ahmed, 23, a sandal salesman who participated in the demonstration, said he was unaware of the Newsweek story until the radio program of Iranian, Afghan and Indian songs that he normally listens to was interrupted with news of the violent protests in Jalalabad. He was initially "doubtful" about the allegation, he said, "but when I saw it on television later that day, I became more sure it was true."

Ghulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller who refused to join the demonstration, said: "I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people."

Del Agha, 47, a dry-goods salesman who joined the protest, said, "Even now, I'm not sure if this was true." He said he participated because "we just wanted to tell the world that the people who did this should be brought to justice" for "disrespecting the holy Koran. . . . We wanted to have a peaceful demonstration but the demonstration was like a car and some people who are the enemies of Afghanistan took the steering wheel and turned it in the wrong direction."

The fallout here is starting to build, and Dan Klaidman, Newsweek's Washington bureau chief, was doing cable news interviews yesterday, describing the story as "an honest mistake."

Said Whitaker: "I suppose you could say we should have foreseen the consequences of the report, but we didn't."

Staff writers N.C. Aizenmann in Kabul and Ann Scott Tyson in Washington contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...referrer=email

[Snowden]

May 16, 2005
Newsweek Apologizes for Report of Koran Insult

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE


Newsweek apologized yesterday for printing a small item on May 9 about reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an item linked to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the deaths of at least 17 people. But the magazine, while acknowledging possible errors in the article, stopped short of retracting it.

The report that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet set off the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago.

"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," Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, wrote in the issue of the magazine that goes on sale at newsstands today. In an accompanying article, the magazine wrote that its reporters had relied on an American government official, whom it has not identified, who had incomplete knowledge of the situation.

But Mr. Whitaker said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know what the ultimate facts are."

The information at issue is a sentence in a short "Periscope" item on May 9 about a planned United States Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at the detention facility in Guantánamo. It said that American military investigators had found evidence in an internal report that during the interrogation of detainees, American guards had flushed a Koran down a toilet as a way of trying to provoke the detainees into talking.

Pentagon officials said that no such information was included in the internal report and responded to Newsweek's apology with unusual anger.

In a statement, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "Newsweek hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny. Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations."

The original account, he said, was "demonstrably false" and "was irresponsible and had significant consequences that reverberated throughout Muslim communities around the world."

Lawrence Di Rita, the top spokesman for the Pentagon, called the editor's note "very tepid and qualified." He added later, "They owe us all a lot more accountability than they took."

Newsweek's apology comes as the use of anonymous sources by news organizations around the country is under heightened scrutiny. Reader surveys have said that the use of unnamed officials is one of the biggest reasons their trust in the news media has eroded, and several news organizations, including The New York Times, have been tightening the rules on the use of unnamed officials.

Mr. Whitaker said yesterday that the magazine adhered as often as possible to a policy of identifying its sources of information. But, he said, "there are certain sources who will only talk to us on a not-for-attribution basis, particularly when it involves sensitive information, and who would be worried about retribution or other consequences if their identities were known."

He said that in this case, the magazine had followed careful and proper reporting techniques. The source had been reliable in the past, he said, and was in a position to know about the report he was describing.

In addition, the reporters, Michael Isikoff, a veteran investigative reporter, and John Barry, a national security correspondent, showed a draft of the article to the source and to a senior Pentagon official asking if it was correct. The source corrected one aspect of the article, which focused on the Southern Command's internal report on prisoner abuse.

"But he was silent about the rest of the item," Newsweek reported. "The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report."

In its article published today, the magazine said that although the reference to the Koran was a side element in an article, it was worth printing because it had come from an American government official. Other news organizations had written that American guards had desecrated the Koran, Newsweek said, but those reports were based on testimony from former detainees who had been released from Guantánamo.

The magazine said that because of reports of other abuses of prisoners by guards at Guantánamo, the possibility that a Koran was flushed down the toilet did not seem that far-fetched. But it said that to Muslims, such an act was especially inflammatory.

In its reconstruction of what happened, Newsweek reported that a copy of the original news item was apparently waved at a news conference on May 6 in Pakistan (the articles are dated several days after their actual publication).

By Tuesday, students in the eastern city of Jalalabad in Afghanistan had started anti-American demonstrations, citing the Newsweek article. It is unclear exactly how the students and other protesters learned of the article, though many Afghans get information from radio programs broadcast in local languages by the Voice of America, BBC and Radio Liberty, which often broadcast foreign news reports.

Mr. Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman, said that the Pentagon began to dig into the allegations in the Newsweek article last Tuesday, when the violence started in Afghanistan. The next day, the military's Southern Command said in a statement that the four-star commander, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, had ordered an investigation into the report.

At a Pentagon news conference last Thursday, reporters asked Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the incident. He played down the Newsweek connection to the violence, citing an assessment from the senior commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry of the Army.

General Myers said it was General Eikenberry's view that "the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said General Eikenberry believed the violence stemmed from the country's reconciliation process.

"He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," General Myers added.

But some senior Pentagon civilians and military officers in Washington challenged General Eikenberry's assessment and said they saw a direct link between the violence and the Newsweek article.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, commenting on the reported desecration after returning home on Saturday from a trip to Europe, said he blamed "enemies of stability" for exploiting student anger about it to foment violence. Afghans in Ghazni, a city south of Kabul that suffered some of the worst violence, have also said that local "troublemakers" may have taken advantage of the anger to shoot at police.

At his news conference, General Myers said that military investigators at Guantánamo were searching their interrogation logs to find the case cited in the Newsweek article.

"They have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they cannot confirm yet that there were ever the case of the toilet incident, except for one case, a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting in the toilet to stop it up as a protest," he said. "But not where the U.S. did it."

This explanation had little or no effect on the demonstrations in Afghanistan, which spread throughout the week, leaving at least 17 civilians dead and many more wounded.

By the end of the week, the military had completed its internal inquiry and was convinced that the allegation as reported by Newsweek never happened and that the article had played a significant role in inciting the violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Di Rita said. He informed Newsweek that its report was wrong.

Newsweek said this prompted Mr. Isikoff to go back to his source to try to confirm the original account.

"But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report," Newsweek wrote, suggesting that it had perhaps been in other investigative reports. "Told of what the Newsweek source said, Di Rita exploded," the magazine wrote. " 'How could he be credible now?' " it quoted him as saying.

On CNN yesterday, Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said the administration was looking into the report "vigorously," and that if it proved to be true, disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible. He also said that certain radical Islamic elements were using the report as an excuse to incite protests against the government.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.

The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/in...html?th&emc=th

[Caldric]

Morons, I seen a video of the editor I was not impressed, sounded worse then Clinton trying to explain sex with a young lady.


Newsweek should be held libel for their story, just like if I slandered someone. they will not retract the story because as soon as they do I think they know they would be sued.

[JohnRN]

Originally Posted by Caldric

Newsweek should be held libel for their story, just like if I slandered someone.

Posted by a member at another site ::

If you read the article carefully, they don't ever admit an error - they state that their anonymous 'highly placed official' can't remember where he read it.

I dunno, that doesn't explain much to me. Since his primary source is making anonymous accusations, shouldn't there have been secondary corroboration of the material used from that source? Not that I'd know anything about journalistic ethics.

But accountable? That's pretty unlikely. Not because he doesn't deserve it - Isikoff and Barry just wanted another Abu Ghraib scandal, only with their name on it this time (curse you, Woodward and Bernstein!). Any idiot should have been able to predict the results, and weighed their evidence accordingly.
But the court of public opinion isn't going to let it happen. Nearly half the country believes unquestioningly anything negative about the war with no critical consideration of the sources whatsoever, while simultaneously disbelieving anything the government has to say and refusing to examine the evidence.

In other words, it will become true because it was in Newsweek - not because it actually happened. That's the real crime. Isikoff and Barry may yet come out of this just peachy.

I happen to agree with him.

[Snowden]

Originally Posted by John.

Posted by a member at another site ::


I happen to agree with him.

Well, there's a lot of truth in it; that it will be blamed on Newsweek instead of whoever started the story. It didn't start in Newsweek; somebody told them it had happened. It was reported as fact because the reporter believed the person who passed the story on to him.

The blame is really on whoever made up the story; people have died because of that person. Not because Newsweek printed it.

Yeah; I reckon I agree with him too.

[Carnage_59]

Originally Posted by Caldric

Morons, I seen a video of the editor I was not impressed, sounded worse then Clinton trying to explain sex with a young lady.


Newsweek should be held libel for their story, just like if I slandered someone. they will not retract the story because as soon as they do I think they know they would be sued.

I heard the disgustingly lame "retraction" on the BBC World Service last night. Tell that to the people who were killed because of the violence.