Some "Do" Get the Hypocrisy about the White House and Newsweek

From Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher:

There's nothing funny about riots and torture, but it's not hard to find the dark humor in certain aspects of the uproar over Newsweek's regrettable Koran-flushing item. Only one of the comedic highlights was White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lecturing the media on Monday about losing “credibility,” given the administration's track record on WMDs in Iraq and other critical issues.

Just last week, McClellan suggested to the same reporters that President Bush had been informed about the D.C. evacuation scare, only to admit later that the president had been out of the loop. And who can forget: This is the man who brought us Mr. Credibility himself, Jim Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon.

Even more ironic, this is an administration that helped sell a war on intelligence often based (as in Newsweek's case) on a single source. Remember “Curveball”? The mobile biological labs? Now McClellan reminds the media about standards that “should be met” before running a story.

Reporters at today's press briefing pressed McClellan on why he now denounces the idea of articles based on a single source when he routinely demands that they rely on just that in White House backgrounders. Or as one put it, "it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everyone else's aren't. "

Now, this is not to say that Newsweek did not do harm, and relying on a single source's say-so was (as per usual) stupid. The magazine got wrong that the specific report in question contained a reference to the guards flushing a Koran. E&P has been as tough on breaches of journalism ethics as anyone; witness our reporting on Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, even Mitch Albom. And we dutifully highlight the various surveys that arrive (one just yesterday) showing public doubts about those ethics.

Keith Olbermann also "gets" it:

Or would somebody rather play politics with this? The way Craig Crawford reconstructed it, this one went similarly to the way the Killian Memos story evolved at the White House. The news organization turns to the administration for a denial. The administration says nothing. The news organization runs the story. The administration jumps on the necks of the news organization with both feet - or has its proxies do it for them.

That’s beyond shameful. It’s treasonous.

It’s also not very smart. While places like the Fox News Channel (which, only today, I finally recognized - it’s the newscast perpetually running on the giant video screens in the movie “1984”) ask how many heads should roll at Newsweek, it forgets in its fervor that both the story and the phony controversy around it are not so cut-and-dried this time.

Firstly, the principal reporter on the Gitmo story was Michael Isikoff - “Spikey” in a different lifetime; Linda Tripp’s favorite journalist, and one of the ten people most responsible (intentionally or otherwise) for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Spikey isn’t just a hero to the Right - the Right owes him.

And larger still, in terms of politics, this isn't well-defined, is it? I mean Conservatives might parrot McClellan and say ‘Newsweek put this country in a bad light.’ But they could just as easily thump their chests and say ‘See, this is what we do to those prisoners at Gitmo! You guys better watch your asses!’

Ultimately, though, the administration may have effected its biggest mistake over this saga, in making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs look like a liar or naïf, just to draw a little blood out of Newsweek’s hide. Either way - and also for that tasteless, soul-less conclusion that deaths in Afghanistan should be lain at the magazine’s doorstep - Scott McClellan should resign. The expiration on his carton full of blank-eyed bully-collaborator act passed this afternoon as he sat reeling off those holier-than-thou remarks. Ah, that’s what I smelled.

And the Los Angeles Times - by way of bush 'roo Skippy - gets it as well:

according to chaos theory, the flapping of a single butterfly's wings can trigger a hurricane halfway across the globe, a phenomenon known as the "butterfly effect." now the bush administration thinks it has detected something that might be called the "newsweek effect." it says the magazine's publication of an item in its may 9 issue, alleging that u.s. guards flushed the koran down a toilet in order to humiliate prisoners at guantanamo bay, was a cause of riots in afghanistan and pakistan last week that left at least 14 people dead.

we'll leave it to the scientists and philosophers to debate the finer points of chaos theory. what we can say here is that the "newsweek effect" is exaggerated...

the more interesting question may not be how newsweek goofed, but why the muslim world is so ready to believe the story. for all the administration's huffing and puffing about newsweek getting the story wrong, it has produced such a catalog of misdeeds at abu ghraib and guantanamo that almost any allegation is instantly credited abroad. the administration itself has said that 11 soldiers have been disciplined for abusing prisoners at gitmo.

the united states has already been convicted in the court of world opinion for its treatment of its prisoners, and that's the administration's fault, not newsweek's.