CLAYTON CRAMER offers a (modestly) cautionary note regarding the “Newsweek lied, people died” meme:
As long as we remember that this is satire, we are okay. At this point, the evidence is not that Newsweek intentionally lied, but that they were misled, and were negligent in rushing into print with a poorly substantiated story.
In this sense, there is a similarity to what happened about the WMDs that we couldn’t find in Iraq. There is one rather substantial difference: the claims about Iraq and WMDs had enormous substantiation, from previous use, from mid-1990s nuclear weapon development, from Iraqi intransigence about UN inspectors, and from lies that Hussein told to his own military about these WMDs.
What did Newsweek have when it decided to blacken the U.S. reputation in the Islamic world? One anonymous source who thinks he saw some mention of this allegation of desecration of the Koran in a report–and now isn’t so sure that he saw it.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: SayUncle:
The more appropriate meme would be Newsweek used an unreliable source and people died.
It is quite sad that Newsweek’s defense consists of saying they couldn’t verify it was untrue.
Yes, it seems the burden of proof lies with those who want a retraction, and not with the original sensational account.
UPDATE: Matt Welch defends the press, but in a rather weak fashion. Nobody’s arguing that reporters wake up in the morning asking themselves how to lose the war for America. At least I’m not. Er, except maybe for Robert Fisk.
But in many ways, they act almost as if they were doing so, and it’s no accident. As the James Fallows anecdote reported here illustrates, leading representatives of the profession regard themselves as loyal to journalism, not to the United States — and are proud to do so, and it seems clear that they reflect that priority in their work.
When you go out of your way to report the bad news, and bury the good news, when you’re credulous toward critics (remember the Boston Globe porn photos?) and treat all positive news as presumptive lies, and when it’s clear that the enemy relies on press behavior in planning its campaigns, then you’ve got a problem. Huffing and puffing in response isn’t constructive.
I hate to keep using the analogy of reporting on racial issues, but it’s relevant because it’s a case where the press realized that it was reporting on minorities in a way that shaped people’s views toward the negative and did harm, and decided to change. So we know they can take account of those things when they care. And because they haven’t tried to do it here, it seems fair to conclude that they don’t care.
Despite Matt’s implication, I don’t get up in the morning trying to figure out how to destroy freedom of the press in America. Instead, I keep trying to persuade the folks at Newsweek, CBS, etc. not to flush free expression down the toilet through their irresponsibility and bias.
It’s long been fashionable to say that the survival of free enterprise depended on the responsible behavior of businesses. I think that the survival of free expression depends on the responsible behavior of businesses in the media field. And I think it’s awfully hard — so hard that Matt doesn’t even try — to defend this behavior as responsible.
MORE: Here’s the Fallows anecdote, excerpted from The Atlantic Monthly.