The Process

 

Comments

[Hildegard]

Oh, c'mon, man. Let's make a board game out of this!

[CAFKIA]

You forgot the "Are we the only ones to report this?" box and the "Has the pentagon vetted this article?" box. Seems that you will have to have a fork that leads to no change at all in reaction if the first of those questions is false and/or if the second is true.

You remember that old Batman tv show where the words BAM! POW! KABLOOEY! would flash on the screen at appropriate moments? For some strange reason I am picturing a fight between Newsweek and this administration and the word flashing up is KOWTOW!

CAFKIA

[gypsy frocks]

Except that they did check it, didn't they? I thought they ran back by the source and also past another Pentagon source who would have been in a position to know. Short of actually having the report in hand, they did all they could do. You could argue that they shouldn't have run anything about it without the report in hand, but that standard would kill an awful lot of legitimate stories. Things are routinely attributed to "people familiar with the report." I'm not convinced there was any gross negligence here, except in everyone involved underestimating the potential impact of the story. The suggestion that Newsweek was furthering their "narrative" is somewhat at odds with other Newsweek stories of recent vintage, like the fawning "Faith of George W. Bush" article from last year.

And of course this is hardly the first time that particular allegation has been publicized. It had already been widely repeated as fact in the "Arab world," and it will continue to be believed as such there no matter what Newsweek says. I'm not saying it's not a fuck-up of some kind, but I think that's all it is: a fuck-up. And it's being magnified and manipulated by people with a lot to gain from doing so.

[CAFKIA]

I personally think it likely that they reported accurately but that what they reported is not to the administration's liking. However, you are correct as was I when I pointed out that regardless, you can't unring a bell. It's out there no matter what.

[lobbygow]

Except that they did check it, didn't they? I thought they ran back by the source and also past another Pentagon source who would have been in a position to know. Short of actually having the report in hand, they did all they could do.

I don't doubt they did, but the rules on what constitutes a "fact check" seem to have changed in this hypersensitive environment.

However, if they did what was reasonably expected, why didn't Newsweek simply say "FUCK YOU?"

What's the risk of sticking to the story?

Are they just a bunch of pushovers?

Speaking of reporting, a local activist e-mailed me to tell me a The New York Sun reporter called him to ask whether an obvious parody of development plans for Brooklyn on my blog that had been excerpted on this website was real.

How dense can one be and still get a job at The Sun?

[gypsy frocks]

ha ha, I have no idea. Does anyone actually read the Sun?

Are Newsweek a bunch of pushovers? Well, it doesn't exactly look good, does it? One day they're saying "We don't even know for sure what's wrong in the story," and the next they retract it altogether.

They couldn't "stick to the story" after their source had second thoughts about what he'd seen in the report. But all they needed to do was report the basic situation: A reliable source told us this, we checked it with another reliable source who didn't object, and now the first source says he's not sure, so we're not sure either. End of story. There's nothing hard to understand about that. But instead it's being turned into another "Rathergate."