From Wizbang: “Andrew Sullivan, citing Daily Kos blogger SusanHu finding other allegations of Koran desecration, misses the point of the Newsweek Koran story by a country mile. The point is not that such allegations existed; it is that Newsweek reported that a US government investigation had (or would) conclude that such event took place.” More below:
No one (to my knowledge) is arguing a few detainees (and/or their lawyers) hadn’t made allegations concerning Koran desecration, yet Sullivan implies that those charges somehow lend credence to Newsweek’s shabby reporting. Sullivan then gets swept up in the “look at all the other prisoner abuse stories” mentality that presumably led Newsweek to run with such a poorly sourced report.
Jay Rosen, at PressThink, examines the story sourcing to show just how incredibly thin it was.
Newsweek, which I will call S1 for our first level source, and for which we have names (Michael Isikoff, Mark Whitaker, John Barry) said that it had sources (S2) without names, who in turn said that other sources (S3) also without names, working as investigators for the government, have learned enough from their sources (S4), likewise unnamed, to conclude in a forthcoming report for U.S. Southern Command (finally, a name!) that unnamed interrogators (S5) dumped the Qur’an into toilets to make a point with prisoners (S6) who are Muslims but also not named.
And as Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker explained, what made this nameless, formless, virtually fact-free item newsworthy was not the “toilet” imagery itself, or some of the other equally revolting allegations, which had been reported numerous times before, but the “fact” that for the first time a government source (that would be S2) said it.
“The fact that a knowledgeable source within the U.S. government was telling us the government itself had knowledge of this was newsworthy,” Whitaker said in an interview with Howard Kurtz.
A point, apparently, totally lost on Sullivan.
Mark Tapscott analyzes the reporting and editing of the story, and finds it fundamentally flawed.
For whatever reason, it appears Newsweek’s reporters and editors forgot Journalism 101’s First Rule: If you don’t have two independently verifiable sources for a serious allegation the publication of which could seriously damage or destroy an individual’s reputation, put somebody in of physical danger or place public safety at risk, don’t publish it.
Notice how Whitaker describes what his two reporters did to establish independently of the lone source’s credibility: “Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur’an charge.“
Read that last sentence again because it is a damaging admission of gross journalistic error. Neither DOD official verified Newsweek’s lone source. One of the two Pentagon officials approached by Newsweek even raised a question about related information apparently provided by the lone source. But Newsweek published the Koran flushing allegation anyway. Surely that decision violated the magazine’s own editing standards.
When a major national publication is willing to ditch its own editorial standards for the possibility of a minor scoop; “big journalism” is in far greater trouble than even its harshest critics imagined.
Posted by Kevin at 10:30 AM
— Wizbang
Note: If you click Trackback at the end of the piece, you’ll see who else picked up this story. I’ll add a trackback as well.
Ah, but fellas, you forgot that other piece of journalism 101… don’t forget to ask the follow up question…
MR. McCLELLAN: I’m not sure what exactly you’re referring to.
Q Frequent briefings by senior administration officials in which the ground rules are we can only identify them as a single anonymous source.
MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I know that there is an issue when it comes to the media in terms of the use of anonymous sources, but the issue is not related to background briefings. But I do believe that we should work to move away from those kind of background briefings. I’ve been working with the bureau chiefs on that very issue. And I think we have taken some steps, and I think you have noticed that.
But there is a credibility problem in the media regarding the use of anonymous sources, but it’s because of fabricated stories, and it’s because of situations like this one over the weekend. It’s not because of the background briefings that you may be referring to.
Q What prevents this administration from just saying from this point forward, you will identify who it is that’s talking to us?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of background briefings, if that’s what you’re asking about, which I assume it is, let me point out that what I’m talking about there are officials who are helping to provide context to on-the-record comments made by people like the President or the Secretary of State or others. I don’t think that that is the issue here when it comes to the use or widespread use of anonymous sources by the media. I think it’s —
Q But–
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me finish — I think it’s a much larger issue. And as I said, one of the concerns is that some media organizations have used anonymous sources that are hiding behind that anonymity in order to generate negative attacks.
Q But to our readers, viewers and listeners, I think it’s all the same.
MR. McCLELLAN: And then you have a situation — you have a situation where we found out later that quotes were attributed to people that they didn’t make. Or you have a situation where you now learn that a single source was used for verifying this allegation — and that source, himself, said he could not personally verify the accuracy of the report. And I think that that’s — you know, that’s one of the issue that concerns the American people when they look at the media, and I think sometimes the media does have difficulty going back and kind of critiquing itself. And sometimes it’s convenient for the media to point to others or to point to something other than internally. I think it’s an issue that they need to work to address internally, and we’ll work to address from our standpoint, as well. And those bureau chiefs that I met with have indicated that it is a problem that they’re working to address internally, as well.
So I think we need to talk about the larger issue here when we talk about it.
Q With all due respect, though, it sounds like you’re saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everyone else’s aren’t.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I’m not saying that at all. In fact, I think you may have missed what I said. I think that we should move away from the use of — the long-used practice of the background briefings, and we’ve taken steps to do that. But I was putting in context what these background briefings that you’re referring to are about. They’re about individuals providing context to remarks or policies that may have been implemented by the administration, and you have other officials on the record talking about —
Q Sometimes you do —
MR. McCLELLAN: — hang on — talking about those policies. You also have incidents, or instances, where individuals are providing context to meetings with world leaders, and there’s some diplomatic sensitivities involved there.
Q We also have incidents, like most recently with the energy speech, where it was before the President made his comments, it was all we had — and we had to make the decision of whether to report this from anonymous sources who, frankly, in that case, we didn’t even know who they were.
MR. McCLELLAN: This is one of the issues that I sat down and discussed with the bureau chiefs. I think it’s best to kind of have those discussions with the bureau chiefs; I did. We’ve made some progress. I think they had a legitimate issue that they brought up. But there’s a larger issue here. Let’s not point to the background briefings as the problem with the credibility in the media about using anonymous sources, because it’s a much larger issue than that, Ken. And I think you recognize that.
You got ’em going Susan, great work!
yikes, didn’t mean to break the width there…
So, is he a Wizbang or a Wizbag?
Does his perspective matter? I’d say that mine was to get the abuse story back online since I suspected that the WH et al. were exploiting the Newsweek problem to minimize the abuse issue.
Is he right about Newsweek’s methodology?
Wizbag….
His perspective is “look over there, nothing to see here”.
Congratulations Susan and Booman
….looks like some of the mud is sticking on people or they wouldn’t try so hard to discredit this. Lots of wizzing going on out there trying to get clean and it still smells bad.
The funny thing is, we didn’t defend Newsweek, and we stated that the only novelty to their story was that a government officual acknowledged the abuse.
So, they read Sullivan’s excerpt but not the article.
Esoteric arguments like the one presented by Wizbang do not minimize in any way that the entire Islamic world is royally pissed at the US and was so before the Newsweek article. Wizbang is attempting to diffuse responsibility for the misdeeds of our government; its this kind of redirection that will not allow us to resolve our primary dilemma, although I’m sure they are not really interested in doing that.
desecration:
By Calgacus
MediaChannel.org
CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 15, 2005 — Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology.
One such incident (during which the Quran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: “A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans.” (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, “Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay,” New York Times, May 1, 2005.)
The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, “The People the Law Forgot,” Dec. 3, 2003). It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, “My Hell in Camp X-Ray,” Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004).
The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan: […]
[my emphasis]
The attack on Newsweek for the article by the White House is obscuring the subject of the story
which has been reported elsewhere. Sound familiar?
Rumours throughout Islam brought by prisoners and their
families is the fuel
for the riots, Newsweek is only one source.
The other important story is that the White House has so much power that it can get the US media to crumble.
Saying:
Is tantamount to saying that nothing has happened until the US government says it happened. That John Q. Public believes this is not surprising given the reluctance of our press corps to get off their knees.
Amy Goodman just quoted Pat Buchanan as saying, last night, that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
Dunno where he said it because she didn’t mention the source .. probably a tv show? I searched but can’t find it. I thought BooMan might like to read it 🙂
Questioning the administration and their shills. They must be made accountable for their actions, lies and abuses. YES, this whole Newsweek spectacle is a diversion. The same old, same old…look over there because there is nothing to see here. These criminals are waist deep in the muck they have created and are slowly but surely sinking. I repeat we must not stop questioning and calling them on the BS they spew on a daily basis. The points Susan and Boo have made are solid and valid and boy you guys make me proud to be a member of the Tribe!
Josh Marshall, who is sometimes unfortunately pedantic, this morning uses clear language at Talking Points Memo to say some interesting things regarding this issue and good reporting:
Then follows a bit later with this (my emphasis):
Unfortunately, he seems to stumble at the end on the common misperception that people writing on blogs are not only not journalists but are working without an editorial net:
I thought that the WH press corp is locked in ongoing combat with McClellan to do away with off the record briefings just for this reason. If the only sources made available are cagey anonymous top White House officials that you can’t name, how is that bad reporting and not just the WH playing the press for suckers? How easy it has become for this administration to force feed disinformation in this way… and the press corp has rolled over and allowed it to happen.
I wrote you a long, thoughtful response, then hit the wrong button and the damn thing was etherized.
Short version: Reporting is a bitch. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Reports for which a reporter is called into a gummint office, then given “information” from an anonymous source often don’t pass the smell test.
When you get an anonymous source, best is to get at least one corroborating backup, two or more is better. Not always possible. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and what you know to be true even if you can’t prove it to courtroom standards.
An old friend who once covered the WH of Johnson and Nixon said covering Congress is easy; where you learn to dig is in covering zoning appeals and school boards. Too many TV talking heads are not reporters but presenters of infotainment. They have never had to dig for info. The public does not know there is a difference between real reporting and TV news reading. Most TV “news” is rip & read.
Too many of the WH gaggle types prefer to be stars and play tennis and chum around with the people they’re supposed to be viewing from a distance, and with some alarm. It’s hard to make a decent amount of money being an honest reporter, and reporters have kids in school, too. And sometimes mortgages.
The star approach to reporters means that people who do the real digging in the halls of Congress and statehouses get little air time or ink.
In a 24-hour news cycle, there is no down time for reflection, research. You have to have something to fill the news hole or put on the air. The constriction of news economies has eliminated bureaus, foreign sources, research time and assistance.
This whole WH-driven flap over the Newsweek story reeks of TANG-redux: divert attention from damaging information by blaming the messenger. Newsweek’s caving in hasn’t helped matters any. I have no particular fondness for Isakoff, but in this instance I think he’s OK.
For the last 20 years, the Republicans have worked to denigrate the people who gather and report and news. Most Americans now rank reporters somewhere below used-car salesmen in social preference. Reporting is one of the highest stress jobs there is, the only one higher is fireman. The clock is always ticking, you are always on deadline, get it wrong and you’re toast.
And if that’s the short answer, you can imagine how long the long one was!
there is another question.
What was the original point of the article?
Since Isikoff does have a little of the taint of a paid-for-hack (the Moore smear for instance), why did Isikoff toss in a reference to Koran desecration from this single source.
“…the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur’an charge.”
Sounds a little TANGy here, doesn’t it?
What was Isikoff’s real point in writing the piece? Was it some coded-piece for the fundies??
(btw, yo Tribunetopia(tm). First c’ment. Like the spielchekr. 🙂