Via: Drudge (for now)
What was that sound I just heard? The muffled cracks of a spine stiffing?
NEWSWEEK's top executives and editors are standing firm behind reporter Michael Isikoff after the magazine retracted his story that U.S. investigators found evidence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Quran.
"Mike was told he would not be sacrificed, we are standing behind him 100%," a top magazine source told the DRUDGE REPORT. "We do not, I repeat, do not let this White House, any White House, make our staff decisions for us."
More after the fold.
The top NEWSWEEK executive claims an emotional Isikoff offered to resign from the magazine over the weekend, in a gesture to cool off the international situation.
...
White House staffers suspect Isikoff's source for the Quran report was from congress, not from the administration.
Operation Pass the Buck continues.
"Isikoff said in a published interview Tuesday morning: "Whenever something like this happens, you've got to take stock and review what you did - how the story was handled. The big point that leaps out is the cultural one. Neither NEWSWEEK nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did. The Pentagon saw the item before it ran, and then they didn't move us off it for 11 days afterward. They were as caught off guard by the furor as we were. We obviously blame ourselves for not understanding the potential ramifications."
Isikoff gives in a little, but it seems he understands the larger point, which is one of cultural climates. Why didn't the Pentagon think this was a big issue beforehand? Is Koranic desecration so commonplace that they just figured, "Yeah, so what?"
For my money, I can only hope the WH and the Right-wing echo chamber continues to chomp at the bit trying to dig at Newsweek...because it certainly looks like they have the desire to defend themselves. Wherewithal is another matter.
Update [2005-5-17 12:31:40 EST by mrCurmudgeon]: It looks Newsweek is headed in the correct direction, pushback tentatively continues. They're beginning to frame the whole debacle nicely.
From their latest article, "How a Fire Broke Out"
NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then.
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After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell.
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Such stories may spark more trouble. Though decrepit and still run largely by warlords, Afghanistan was not considered by U.S. officials to be a candidate for serious anti-American riots. But Westerners, including those at NEWSWEEK, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence, especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith.
The new framing? (ie: We had no idea how bad it is over there?) Could be interesting.
"In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo."
Sweet!