In the past few weeks I've been monitoring media stories and their retractions for errors made as a result of not verifying facts!
The riots and deaths that have recently occurred in Afghanistan are one of the most egregious examples of bad journalism I've ever seen. That it came out of a Newsweek Magazine story (worldwide circulation of 4.9 million) is all the more shocking.
The media has of course, white-washed or muted the truth of their culpability in this situation. The facts are that unverified inflammatory and defamatory information found it's way to print. This caused a destabilization in a politically charged environment which fragmenting relations with a population that were still tenuous at best, creating chaos and causing many injuries and death (to both Afghani's and Americans), from the rioting which result from these stories.
These injuries and deaths are a result of unbridled arrogance by yet another news organization, whose hubris led them to neglect their duty as vanguards of the truth.
Is it any wonder why viewership of tv news and readership of newspapers is at an all time low? No one can trust or believe in what they report anymore as they have proven, especially in the last 9 months, to be extremely fallible. I'm sure Marshall McLuhan has been turning over in his grave.
Update: This is what National Review has to say after contacting Newsweek editors and reporters responsible for this story:
Equally disturbing is the fact that Newsweek reporters seemed to have little idea how explosive such a story would be. While noting that, to Muslims, desecrating the Koran “is especially heinous,” Thomas looks for explanations, including “extremist agitators,” of why protest and rioting spread throughout the world, and maintains that it was at Imram Khan’s press conference that “the spark was apparently lit.” He confesses that after “so many gruesome reports of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the vehemence of feeling around this case came as something of a surprise.”
What planet do these people live on that they are surprised by something so entirely predictable? Anybody with a little knowledge could have told them it was likely that people would die as a result of the article. Remember Salman Rushdie?
Dudes, the damage has been done! I say each family of a deceased and injured person should teach Newsweek a valuable and costly lesson!
It seems to me that they could be liable for a lawsuit. Especially from the relatives of the Americans.
Even the filing of such a suit would send ripples though the media that they need to act responsibly.
Posted by: _Jon at May 15, 2005 09:59 PMUmm, forgive me for not accepting the party line here.
Newsweek probably reported something that really did happen. As we have seen from the Bush propaganda machine facts are useless.
The abuses in Gitmo are just barely starting to squirm out from under the blanket of secrecy. We are just starting to get the first glimmers of just how our government is acting under the leadership of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush et al.
By the time the facts are known it will be too late for Newsweek though. As for damage to American image abroad, I can't see how reporting a story can compare to the policies our government enacts. Just listen to the Neo-Con rhetoric from Ann Coulture and the rest. We have been at war with Islam since 9-11-2001. Sorry but it is true. If you don't like it don't re-elect Bush... oh too late.