Qur'ān desecration story

I usually try to avoid "media" stories.  But sometimes, like with the CBS "Killian memos" flap last year, it's hard to avoid.  Even more so with the Newsweek/Qur'ān desecration story.

This news article provides good background on how the international demonstrations over the Qur'ān desecration alleged in the news item got started: Newsweek Retracts Account of Koran Abuse by U.S. Military by Katharine Seelye and Neil Lewis New York Times 05/17/05.

Josh Marshall has some good reflections on the story, one (05/16/05) focusing on the White House reaction with a follow-up (05/17/05).  And he talks about the "anonymous sources" issue (05/17/05).

Duncan Black of Media Matters and the Atrios blog tags this as a must-read: The resignation of Scott McClellan by Keith Olbermann MSNBC 05/16/05.  (I should mention he uses the word "treasonous" too loosely.  I'm not resigned to that accusation becoming routine in American political discussion, although for Republican jingoes it has been since the 9/11 attacks.)

CJR Daily also looks at the story: Distorted Story Spawns Distorted Theories by Brian Montopoli, CJR Daily 05/16/05

One of the things that shouldn't get lost in the wave of White House intimidation of the press and the chorus of criticism from the Bush fans is whether the underlying story is true.  As others have detailed, including the Brian Montopoli piece linked above, the desecration of the Qur'ān in a manner similar to that Newsweek mentioned in their now-retracted story has been reported several times before.  One of the problems with the"independent" study CBS commissioned to investigate the "Killian memos" issue, is that it failed to look at whetherthe underlying  story was true: The Flawed Report on Dan Rather by James Goodale New York Review of Books 04/07/05 issue.  (This link will go behind subscription relatively soon.)

Lost in the commotion over the authenticity of the documents is that the underlying facts of Rather's 60 Minutes report are substantially true. Bush did not take the physical exam required of all pilots; his superiors gave him the benefit of any doubt; he did receive special treatment and Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer, was unhappy with the loss of ANG's investment in him when Bush informed Killian he was leaving for Alabama. Before the broadcast, Mary Mapes, the CBS producer of the program, confirmed the facts in the documents with retired Major General Bobby Hodges, who had been Killian's superior in the ANG. Later Hodges told the panel he did not think the documents were authentic, but did not disagree that the facts were substantially correct.

Following the broadcast, Marian Carr Knox, who was Killian's secretary at thetime, confirmed the facts of the broadcast, saying, "There's no doubt in my mind that [the] information is correct." When the panel cross-examined Knox she seemed less certain of what she had told Rather but she did not contradict any of the broadcast. Since the broadcast, no one has come forward to say the program was untruthful.

But we also shouldn't let the underlying story make us overlook problems in the Newsweek story.  Bob Somerby picks up on one that I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else: Flyweight Follies! (Part 1) The Daily Howler 05/17/05.

One challenge in commenting about this is that while the Republican faithful dutifully trash Newsweek, liberals have to hold their noses while saying anything that might seem to be defending Mike Isikoff, one of the reporters for the original story.  As Eric Alterman puts it, Isikoff  "displayed an extremely unhealthy willingness to be guided by sources of a nefarious nature in the past," an oblique reference to Isikoff's dubious role in reporting on the Clinton scandals (05/17/05).  Alterman, by the way, seem to be in a bit of a bitter mood  over this whole thing in the post just linked.

Is the underlying story true, that Guantanamo interrogators have been desecrating the Qur'ān?  Probably.  At this point I agree with Juan Cole's evaluation in his post I quoted yesterday, that the allegations are certainly "plausibile," if not confirmed beyond reasonable doubt.  Molly Ivins thinks the desecration story is firmly established: Don't Blame Newsweek by Molly Ivins WorkingforChange.com 05/17/05.

The heavy-handed White House role in this seems to be aimed at intimidating another corporate news organization in the same way they did CBS.  In my first post on this, I spoofed the idea of requiring public recantations.  But that sounds a lot like what the White House want here.  A mere retraction isn't good enough for them.

But I still come back to my same mantra that I repeat over and over.  The torture scandal isn't going away.  It's too serious and too well-known, and it has far-reaching consequences in foreign policy.  "Blame Newsweek" may or may not help defuse the political controversy in the sthor term in Pakistan and elsewhere.  But it won't stop the problems caused by the torture gulag.

Newsweek is also taking flak not only for the thin sourcing of the story. But the decision to run it at all is being called irresponsible, and worse.  But Brian Montopoli gets it right on this question:

There are, however, a few details that should be considered by the armada of self-righteous media critics so readily offering up unqualified condemnations of the magazine. First off, Newsweek couldn't have expected its story to stir up so much Muslim anger, given that details about Guantanamo interrogators allegedly defacing the Koran have been periodically published for more than a year now. A Nexis search reveals multiple mentions of similar allegations, including a March 14, 2004 report in the London Observer that "copies of the Koran would be trampled on by soldiers and, on one occasion, thrown into a toilet bucket"; an August 5, 2004 report in the London Independent that "guards allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets;" and January 2005 reports in the Denver Post and Hartford Courant that some prisoners "were forced to watch copies of the Koran being flushed down toilets." Given that none of these previous reports sparked protest, much less riots, it's unrealistic to expect the magazine's editors to have seen the protests coming -- after all, they thought the detail was insignificant enough to be confined to one sentence in a short report tucked away in the front of the magazine. (True, the Newsweek piece claimed the allegations about disrespecting the Koran came from a government report, while previous pieces relied on eyewitness accounts. But the magazine can be forgiven for not expecting protestors to parse the difference.)

Now, some like Keith Olbermann wonder if this wasn't a deliberate set-up, a Karl Rove "black-ops" action, we might say.  The same speculation came up about the Killian memos/"Rathergate" story last year.  This Tom Tomorrow cartoon paints a memorable picture of that whole episode.

The sound and fury over the Qu'ran desecration story in Right Blogostan shows one of the favorite conservative pastimes at work, comma-dancing on a story that doesn't fit the Republican worldview of the day with the attitude that it must be a liberal lie.

But it also is a moment of the stab-in-the-back alibi in the making.  In this case, the riots in Afghanistan highlighted what a farce the claims of happy Afghan democracy really is.  Now, people who took the time to dig out an occasional article from Web sites or the inner pages of the news section knows that the main effect of the Afghan War outside of Kabul is to return the country to the status of failed state.  Failed narco-state might be more like it, but the "narco" part is doing quite well.

But now the White House and the Republican echo chamber get to promote the idea that the problem with the Afghan War is the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press!  As Duncan Black puts it (DiRita - Detainees Desecrated Own Korans! 05/17/05):

Look,this meta-issue has little to do with who did what with which Koran at this point. It's about the administration doing their best to pretend that all their problems are the result of the stab-in-the-back media. To some extent, they may be right - 5 minutes watching Fox News or spent perusing the leading lights of the conservative wingnutosphere is probably enough to cause riots in just about any part of the world.

The White House can't be satisfied with house organs like FOX News and the Washington Times.  They want to bully the rest of the media into just printing the handouts and public statements of Dear Leader and his administration.