Cleveland's AM news radio ABC affiliate has dissembled about Newsweek's fakery all afternoon, at one point announcing that "the White House has demanded Newsweek retract a story it says damaged US efforts in the war on terror." No confirmation of Newsweek's public, if unacceptable, admission of manifest error; though ABC has ensured listeners will know what the false claim was.
Meanwhile, the magazine's representatives and defenders have invited the public to revisit the mainstream media's sorry performance over the last forty-two months for curious reasons. Because journalists have taken groundless claims from captured terrorists seriously before, we're told, Newsweek has really done nothing new nor wrong. But this story was different. Take a close look at how the riots in Southwest Asia were most prominently reported as a direct response to the Newsweek report, when, as Joe Gandelman reminds us, observers like General Richard Myers have disputed this, noting that local factors were the primary causes. That's not to say the magazine is absolved for printing rumor or that foreign understanding of America won't have temporarily suffered. The Newsweek canard is not like others because it was published by veteran reporters from a major American magazine and immediately became a political focal point as establishment media ascribed motives to Third World civil strife that helpfully broke out soon after.
Though lethal rioting took place on the other side of the world, newspapers and other agencies may soon sheepishly step up behind Newsweek and clarify earlier statements on just why protesters turned violent. This was no conspiracy, it was the work of a blindly collective enterprise. But no less dangerous or reprehensible.