America - Koran Not Flushed - Newsweek Apologizes

How many died because of this Newsweek allegation that US interrogators at Gitmo flushed a Koran down the toilet? An allegation based on anonymous sources. How much damage has been done to the reputation of the US?

Now comes Newsweeks admission that they were wrong and an apology.

Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

But how many in the world will read this admission? And of those who do, how many will conclude that Newsweek was pressured into this admission by the government to quell the riots?

This is the danger of old media - readership numbers matter more than the truth.

Where was old media when Muslims used the Bible as toilet paper?

Powerline has much more and notes this:

So Isikoff relied on a telephone call with an anonymous government official paraphrasing a forthcoming report, confirmed by placing a draft of the Periscope item before another anonymous government official. Isikoff never saw the underlying report or even had it read to him.

The saying going around the blogsphere is "Newsweek lied, people died". Someone should get fired over this one.

UPDATE

I said Muslims wouldn't buy Newsweek's admission and apology. CNN reports "But Muslims said they suspected that pressure from Washington was behind the magazine's climbdown, Reuters reported Monday."

There's no putting this genie back in the bottle.
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