Dateline: Home Study

Newsweek today retracted last week’s story about the military flushing a Koran down the toilet in Gitmo. Too little, too late. The media is so biased against the military that they were all too happy to belive this story so they ran with it. Now it looks like they didn’t have their facts straight and didn’t really bother to check too much. This is Dan Rather all over again.

The news media is all too quick to call for resignations an firings from the military perhaps Whitaker will step up to the plate, fire these reporters and then resign himself. The fact is he was in charge when the article was published and the protests which resulted from his magazine’s artilce resulted in deaths. There is no excuse for such shoody work and an apology and retraction are not enough.

I, however, will not hold my breath for this happen. Look how long it took Rather to resign after his snafu. Of course Dan still says the article was true.

Some will say I am quick to judge Newsweek as being biased. Perhaps so but let’s ask this question. Assume the allegations were true, what did Newsweek hope to gain from reporting the alleged incident? Riots and deaths? Or was it to merely try to shame the military? And, again assuming this incident had happened, what would Newsweek have reported had the soldier had long hair and the toilet was on a street in New York instead of at Gitmo? Why it would have been an expression of free speech then and possibly eligible for funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

No, Whitaker and all responsible for this incident must go. It’ll never happen.

For another take, which I agree with, check out Captain’s Quarters.