Another "fake but accurate" story...

Well Newsweek has admitted that their huge cover story from last week that contained among other things allegations that interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran by flushing it down the toilet "contained some errors." Fifteen people have died as a result of protests sparked by their report in the Periscope section of the magazine which "contained some errors." Newsweek claims that they "showed the story by writers Michael Isikoff and John Barry to two Defense Department officials. One declined to respond, and the other challenged another part of the story but did not dispute the Quran charge, Whitaker said." So I guess the standard is if there is no response that must mean its true. Since then the military has said "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." The information pertaining to the flushing of the Quran apparently came from one anonymous source, someone that Newsweek has used in the past, but the sources information could not be validated on this aspect of the story. So of course Newsweek goes with the story. Makes you wonder about the other stories that Newsweek has run using this same anonymous source's information.

Its unbelievable that Newsweek would go with an element of the story that they could not validate and which they had to have known would cause an uproar in the Muslim world, not to mention put US soldiers at risk. Of course Newsweek and the rest of the MSM could care less what happens to US soldiers as long as they make the Bush administration and the US military look bad.

At some point the MSM has to stop and ask themselves "who side are we on?"

UPDATE: See here for Howard Kurtz's front page story on the Newsweek fiasco. And here for Evan Thomas's attempt at the "fake but accurate" angle on the story. Moonbat Central has more here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now wait a minute, didn't they apologize? Are they wrong? Or are they too damn arrogant to admit that they are wrong? This is beginning to sound like CBS News and Dan Rather. This from the NY Times;

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

UPDATE 3: Reuters now gets into the act and continues to fan the flames with a little help from their partner MSNBC with this headline; Muslims Skepitcal on Quran Apology, Many believe Newsweek reacted to US pressure.

UPDATE 4:

Jonathan Alter: "Now you say, 'Why are you doing this kind of reporting?' And I guess my answer to that is, that there's really only about eight or ten news organizations in the entire world who do any real digging and everybody else kind of re-chooses what these eight or ten news organizations dig up. I understand why people are very upset about this, we're upset about it as well, but I think the larger question that people have to ask is, do they want news organizations out there trying to dig or do they want to take all their information from the government? And, we are still you know, pretty determined, very determined, to be out there digging."

How about a news organization that reports accurate stories and not made up crap! How about that John? He makes it sound like we should be applauding Newsweek because they reported what turns out to be not true and caused the death of 15 people. Give me a break!

Final Update, maybe; Newsweek has finally officially retracted its fake but accurate and finally fake toilet flushing story.