Newswreck

The Mainstream Media has done it again. Only this time the screw-up really was a matter of life and death. Newsweek has retracted it's story about US interrogaters at G-bay flushing Korans down the toilet. As it turns out the only thing flushed down the toilet was yet another tier of journalistic integrity. Lives have been lost (15 of them) and the image of the US is marred even further in a region that is too quick to assume the worst about our intentions for their culture and their part of the world. The Bush administration and the Pentagon are understandably infuriated about this. The folly of this episode is so remarkable that one can't help but wonder how and why Newsweek would publish something like this. Could it be that they (like CBS) are so eager to be a hindrance to the Bush administration that thier partisan zeal blinds them from the basic principles of sound journalism? It's sad that journalism students across the country can look at the American mainstream media and learn far more about what not to do rather than what they should do.