Bias Kills

For the news on Newsweek's false Koran-flushing atrocity, Instapundit's got the best reactions and link round-up, with an assist to LGF:

• Name: Every good scandal needs a name, and every good Republican scandal takes the canonical form "____-gate." Because it can't be blamed on Republicans, this one's dubbed "Newsweek Lied, People Died" by many, though Michael Williams may have been first. David Horowitz's Moonbat Central didn't get the meme-naming memo--Rocco DiPippo's pushing "Toilet-gate."



• Current Casualty Count: 16 dead, over 100 injured, and hundreds of Moslem clerics threatened "jihad against the U.S. if those responsible for the alleged desecration were not handed over to an Islamic country for punishment within three days."



• Home Office Update: Newsweek apparently went to Defcon 4--adding a post-script to Sunday's apology:

  On Monday afternoon, May 16, Whitaker issued the following statement: Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

  Which prompted this classic dry quip from the Prof:

  Good for them. Next time, of course, maybe they'll put some of those vaunted Big Media fact-checkers and editors to work before they publish.

• Why: Media bias. Instapundit's retort presumes MSM checks and catches crap like this. Not recently--fact-checkers apparently go on strike just before each Bush-bashing orgy. Bad news for Bush -- especially about the GWOT -- needs no confirmation, because everyone knows it's true. Everyone in blue states anyway. Instapundit concludes:

  When you go out of your way to report the bad news, and bury the good news, when you're credulous toward critics . . . and treat all positive news as presumptive lies, and when it's clear that the enemy relies on press behavior in planning its campaigns, then you've got a problem.

• It's Not Just Once: As previously noted and demonstrated by Ra^therGate, the MSM castigates Republicans for conduct identical to Democrats, who mostly escape criticism, much less investigation. Remember last year Britain and Boston were awash with photos of Coalition soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqis? After the pics were published (first in the Arab media, then throughout America and Europe), the scoop was dog poop--crudely photo-shopped pictures lifted from S&M Internet porn sites. (Don't look here. I told you.)



• Illustrations of Inconsistent Behavior: The MSM quarantined almost all the footage from 9/11, worried -- notes Captain's Quarters commenter Aileron -- "such pictures would unnecessarily anger the American people and lead to violence against Muslim Americans." Newsweek showed no similar concern for a fabrication reflecting poorly on America where violence was far more likely, and in fact occurred. ABC was particularly cavalier:

  Protests ensued and people died. The protests were particularly large in Afghanistan and Pakistan, two allies of the United States in the war on terror. So were the protests opportunistic efforts on the part of the opposition in those countries or do they reflect a real sense of outrage? Probably both.

  So, Newsweek libel against America: 16; 9/11 footage: 0.
  
  Still the press is sensitive when it supports the cause, as Instapundit reminds:

  I hate to keep using the analogy of reporting on racial issues, but it's relevant because it's a case where the press realized that it was reporting on minorities in a way that shaped people's views toward the negative and did harm, and decided to change. So we know they can take account of those things when they care. And because they haven't tried to do it here, it seems fair to conclude that they don't care.

  But, as Dave Price noted, the MSM wasn't concerned for Catholics offended by government-funded sacrilege masquerading as art.



• Useful Idiots: Some are defending Newsweek--Andrew Sullivan and the Daily Kos focusing on other un-verified reports of Koran-flushing, all originating from captives released from Gitmo. There's three problems with this. First, as LGF noted, Al Qaeda's own training manual (Chapter 18) instructs captured terrorists to "insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge. . . [and] Complain of mistreatment while in prison." Second, other journalists are appalled--The Anchoress chats with one. Finally, at least since the mid-90s effective date of 42 U.S.C. § 6294(a)(2)(E) (outlawing private sale of toilets over 1.6 gallons/flush), American toilets couldn't possibly pulp the Koran. Newsweek should have known. UPDATE: Silent Running experiments with a text sacred in blue America.



• The Defense: Journalistic ethics. Some provisions sound good. But I can't remember when they last protected the public. Unlike, say, legal ethics, media ethics aren't deployed to regulate or constrain press behavior; "journalistic ethics" surface only to shield the press from, for example, testifying about crimes they observed and abetted. Exactly which "ethics" provision did Rather violate? I'm not sure anyone even asked.
  
  Even if ethics existed, they vanish when the subject is Republicans or America-the-good. That's because journalism trumps patriotism, as Instapundit observes:

  Nobody's arguing that reporters wake up in the morning asking themselves how to lose the war for America. . .
  
  But in many ways, they act almost as if they were doing so, and it's no accident. . . [L]eading representatives of the profession regard themselves as loyal to journalism, not to the United States -- and are proud to do so, and it seems clear that they reflect that priority in their work.

  Newsweek's blunder isn't cause to question freedom of speech; no serious person says so. But the MSM's credibility has tanked, while Blogs -- with inherent, if decentralized fact-checkers -- are up. I agree with Roger Simon reader Neo-Neocon that "the use of anonymous sources has made the MSM into a sort of glorified gossip column--a gossip column with teeth, as we see here." Blogs can't substitute for press, but neither are they at fault; yet they might be blamed, says Nick Gillespie in Reason: "How long will it take before some sagacious media critic blames the problem on the unhealthy marketplace competition that degrades the journalistic standards once upheld by even classified writers of the days of yore and/or the Internet?"

Conclusion: Media objectivity died long ago. Bush-bashing cloaked in phony neutrality now is beyond biased--it's become deadly. Heads should roll at Newsweek. Better still if caution and fact-checking returned industry-wide.

More:

Sgt Mom advises the MSM:

The so-called “Islamic street”: Do you guys ever get tired of being played for saps? Try some exercises in critical thinking, next time someone tells you some wild story. I realize that the 21st century may be a bit of a leap, intellectually, politically, and technologically, but the 19th century would work for us… for choice, the latter half of it. Realize that your actions make it really difficult for the spokesman for CAIR and other American Islamic groups to go on insisting that “Islam is a religion of peace” with a straight face. Some of them must be very close to OD’ing on Botox, by now.