Furhter to this Isikoff chap, although he did have the story about Clinto and Lewinsky, Newsweek chose NOT to report it, and Matt Drudge released it and the Washington Post then ran with it.
I think the term “unamed source” is often used as a term to cover up speculation by the reporter.
In other words. They hear a rumor. They confirm it by hearing the rumor again and again. When they publish it is now an “unamed source”.
Any military base is full of rumors. Regardless they were wrong and should be held accountable. Even the NYT is giving them advice. Good God!
I think it’s hilarious that MSNBC is equating the Whitehouse’s treatment of this string of lies masking as a ‘news story’ with the Pentagon Papers brewhaha in 1971.
The press is WAY too full of itself. Yet when faced with either doing the right thing, or continuing to defend there agenda based lies, they pick the latter almost every time.
[quote]tekteach wrote:
What do people think about this? I think it’s highly irresponsible for the Whitehouse to force suppression of the facts due to hard evidentiary proof.
[/quote]
I think – THANK GOD THERE’S ANOTHER CANADIAN TO OFFER CRITICISM!
Thanks sonny, it’s just what we needed!
Don’t you see, cream?
How else can some Canadians feel superior to the US without pointing out any and all shortcomings? Don’t you see how much harder it would be to point out shortcomings in Saudi Arabia, or China? How smug Canadians feel when parrotting “it’s all about the oil”; while ignoring the fact that without the OilSands Canada would be just as motivated by self interest? How China, Russia and France continue to veto intervention in the Sudan because of their oil interests?
Screw that man, let’s take on Uncle Sam, it’s much easier to do, plus you don’t get imprisoned!
[quote]rainjack wrote:
tekteach wrote:
And don’t call me son, boy.
This little bitch slap right here proves the worthlessness of your attempts at debate.[/quote]
Oh did I slap a bitch? I thought I slapped a boy. To suggest that you even debate is a joke. Your level of comprehension comes into question as you can’t identify an argument. And chronologically, in comparison to me, you are a boy, so the only derisive word in any statement was uttered by you when you called me son.
Where, in anything I wrote, did it say America sucks? You know absolutely nothing about me but you jump to this conclusion. Excellent deductive reasoning RJ. Now I know why you are such a great debater. It is easy to see how a 17 year old kicks your ass in a debate. By the way, learn to use the shift key; Canadian and America are proper nouns and require capitals.
Really? I find that interesting as here is a valid argument from one of your ilk.
[quote] Boston Barrister wrote:
Anyway, if I were you I’d get grounded in U.S. 1st Amendment law, which pretty well protects the press from any liability over mistakes of this kind – gross negligence. You’d have to prove they had actual knowledge it was false at the time it was published, and also published it with complete disregard for the consequences to even begin to have a case.[/quote]
Boston Barrister’s argument forces me to look further into U.S. Ist. Amendment law to qualify my initial post. SEE, that is the way to argue.
I don’t know if the people who think like me have fragile manhoods but I know that you currently have shrinking balls. Obviously your own manhood is questionable. I never had to shoot anything into my ass to get my muscles to grow or, for that matter, get someone else to do it because I didn’t have the “balls”.
You are such a boy.
CAMBRIDGE DIARIST
Consequences
by Martin Peretz
The New Republic
5-19-2005
[Editor’s note: This piece has been modified from the way it appears in the print edition.]
Seymour Hersh, whose famously inventive journalism has won him lots of prizes and a new lease on journalistic life as The New Yorker’s crusading Beltway gumshoe, has done a laying on of hands with Michael Isikoff, the prime author of the nuclear tidbit that appeared in the May 9 issue of Newsweek about the desecration of the Koran by American interrogators at Guant?namo. Hersh this week asserted that Isikoff “does that magic thing that’s so obvious but that nobody does: he reads before he writes.” Nobody does? It may not come as news to critical readers of Hersh’s work that he finds something arresting about the notion that you should read before you write. But what is really risible about his pronouncement is that, in this matter, apparently, reading before writing is precisely what Isikoff did not do. He seems never to have read any official document stating that any American official anywhere during the present war against Islamic terrorists abused the sacred book of the Muslims.
And yet Isikoff alleges in the first sentence of his 211-word dispatch that there were “internal FBI e-mails” referring to just such disrespectful treatment. Did he read them? He never explicitly claims that he did. So we are left with what Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker described–in the limp apology that he worked up two weeks after the Periscope item appeared–as “a knowledgeable U.S. government source” (Isikoff’s one and only), who, later, apparently “couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Qur’an incident in the report we cited.” So the big scoop turns out to be a thin reed. And this extraordinary instance of journalistic sloppiness has caused an enormous amount of human suffering and wreaked a diplomatic disaster. The human loss can in part be calculated: At least 17 people were killed in the riots that were incited by Isikoff’s hot tip.
The New York Times reported that, by Friday prayers, “thousands of Muslims, from Gaza to Pakistan to Indonesia, emerged … to join Afghans in rapidly spreading protests over the reported desecration of a Koran by American interrogators.” It would be too much to expect that the American press, and the Western media more generally, would grasp from such frenzy a deep truth about much of the Muslim world, which is that it practices a politics of frenzy, that it is gladly feverish, and that it regularly mistakes excitability for authenticity. Mobs go into the streets at a mere hint from some muezzin, and they may so go anywhere and everywhere in what Stefan Zweig presciently called “this age of simultaneity.” Just because “the Muslim street” reacts is not proof that anything has happened. Like Isikoff, the raging crowds in the streets did not read any Pentagon document. But sometimes it is easier to believe what one has not seen.
The Newsweek delinquency broaches still another lesson that journalists will have to face, however reluctantly: that confidential sources–especially “reliable” confidential sources, which may mean eager sources who are too willing to tell because they have their own personal agendas to serve–can be untrustworthy. The Newsweek scandal deserves to exacerbate the debate in the general culture about the legitimacy of anonymous sources that is now burgeoning in American journalism. After all, anonymity is not a promise of veracity. Isn’t the identity of a source of a significant (not to mention libelous) story a part of the American public’s right to know–the same right that journalists invoke in almost every other situation of controversy? Please recall that, in the continuing controversy about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by an unnamed White House official, there is a liberal clamor demanding to know who told Robert Novak about her. Nobody was hurt in the incident, and what was leaked was not much of a secret in Washington, either. But transparency is demanded. The assumption that the culprit worked in the White House was reason enough for Democrats to go so far as to accuse the unknown leaker of treason. But Newsweek’s confidential source for the Periscope canard has been described by Whitaker as a “knowledgeable U.S. government source.” Surely there is an overwhelming public interest in knowing who that person is: He or she may have broken the law. About the malevolence of his or her intention in fobbing this inflammatory fakery on a gullible reporter there can be no doubt. Also, how many other times had Isikoff relied on this magical source–now found utterly lacking in reliability–or what is now, by everybody’s admission, his nonstory?
The journalistic establishment is circling the wagons, of course. Journalists usually blame themselves last and forgive themselves first. They are taking special umbrage at the White House’s indignation about Newsweek’s iniquity and insisting that this is the pot calling the kettle anti-Muslim. It is certainly true that the Bush administration, at Guant?namo and at Abu Ghraib, is responsible for a good deal of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world (see Noah Feldman, “Ugly Americans,” page 23). The Bush administration is not perfectly qualified to give lessons in transparency. But, if Scott McClellan should not be allowed to hide behind Michael Isikoff, neither should Michael Isikoff be allowed to hide behind Scott McClellan. The subject this week is not the misdeeds of government. The subject this week is the misdeeds of journalism. No wonder many editors and editorialists want to change the subject.
“We feel badly”: With those insultingly wan words, Whitaker thinks that he has wrapped things up. All of Newsweek’s penitential protestations notwithstanding, what emerges from this episode is the image of a profession that is complacent, self-righteous, and hopelessly in love with itself. Is this a terrible generalization? Well, there are 17 people who lost their lives because of the state of journalistic practice at a U.S. magazine. When American journalists do not think of themselves as heroes, they think of themselves as victims; but here they are neither. They are–I mean Isikoff and his editors–simply scavengers.
Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of TNR.
The more you run your mouth the more you prove my point. You have said nothing - anywhere - of substance. And the personal attacks? Kiddo - I don’t have to make personal attacks to make you look petty and small - you’re remarks uspeek volumes about your childish character.
And to use one of BB’s posts as some sort of proof that you can actually think? WTF is that all about?
You crack me up you poor, skinny little child.
Back on topic.
Did anyone question the actual physical practicality of flushing a book down a toilet??
Is that possible?
And again more to the point aren’t they going to protest something anyway. Does it matter what? It’s almost like they have a protest whether they have an issue or not. It’s about being devisive. The leaders will find something for them to be mad about. If not this then something else will come along.
Kind of reminds me of the Simpsons last week when Bart said the following when comparing religions:
“Are stupid differences aren’t as important as our stupid similarities”
The Islamic world hates the west. They need no Newsweek story to make them hate us more.
Staring at success through the backyard fence for your entire life is fodder enough for them to take hostages, topple buildings, and kill innocents.
However - Why throw gasoline on the fire? Surely the reporter who made up the Koran Flush story had to be aware of the potential fallout.
I really wish that the agenda based “news” would end. Whatever happened to being objective? It seems that if you don’t like the way the story is going, you can throw in a couple of “unnamed sources” and get the story you just know should be true - even if you have to lie to make it so.
You couldn’t flush it down to toilet in one of them Al Gore low flow approved toilets, that’s for sure.
Also, one has to question the wisdom of giving the koran to detainees. Couldn’t you argue it’d be very similar to giving Mein Kampf to captured SS?
[quote]redswingline wrote:
Also, one has to question the wisdom of giving the koran to detainees. Couldn’t you argue it’d be very similar to giving Mein Kampf to captured SS?[/quote]
Are you serious with this statement?
[quote]redswingline wrote:
You couldn’t flush it down to toilet in one of them Al Gore low flow approved toilets, that’s for sure.
Also, one has to question the wisdom of giving the koran to detainees. Couldn’t you argue it’d be very similar to giving Mein Kampf to captured SS?[/quote]
I disagree, they should be given the Koran. Of course the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, is intolerant of any other religion, but I don’t think allowing them the ability to pracitce their religion should be denied. If they chose to desecrate the Koran, that is their choice.
Here is a little bit more about the significance of the Koran.
One of the most effective methods for fighting extremism has been to employ the teachings of the koran in a positive manner.
Obviously some people just need to be shot.
[quote]tekteach wrote:
I don’t know if the people who think like me have fragile manhoods but I know that you currently have shrinking balls. Obviously your own manhood is questionable. I never had to shoot anything into my ass to get my muscles to grow or, for that matter, get someone else to do it because I didn’t have the “balls”.
You are such a boy.
[/quote]
Take it fucking outside.
You and RJ.
On the ground…cause it’d be funny to watch you cry and beg for momma.
I mean…WTF dude? You come here and in your first dozen posts manage to insult one of this places Vets and a good guy at that? And not in any of that pussy ass recess shoving crap we all do but just being a mean little punk-bitch?
Not to mention insulting the rest of us with your crap. Now…before you start off on me–I don’t take steroids, I’m not up for them…yet, if ever. But RJ’s earned the right through his years under iron and his years in research to do what the fuck he wants. You’ve earned nothing here.
Have a big ol’ cup of shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.
Boy.
[quote]Professor X wrote:
redswingline wrote:
Also, one has to question the wisdom of giving the koran to detainees. Couldn’t you argue it’d be very similar to giving Mein Kampf to captured SS?
Are you serious with this statement?[/quote]
watch out, he’s digging in his closet for the strawman suit…
redswingline wrote:
“You couldn’t flush it down to toilet in one of them Al Gore low flow approved toilets, that’s for sure.”
Ah, a Republican after my own heart!!!
Remember, Al “I will fight for you” Gore and his tenements.
Didn’t get much air time (surprise) but it was very revealing.
Reds, way to work that one in!!!
JeffR
[quote]rainjack wrote:
The more you run your mouth the more you prove my point. You have said nothing - anywhere - of substance. And the personal attacks? Kiddo - I don’t have to make personal attacks to make you look petty and small - you’re remarks uspeek volumes about your childish character.
And to use one of BB’s posts as some sort of proof that you can actually think? WTF is that all about?
You crack me up you poor, skinny little child.[/quote]
Boy, I must have really hit home.
[quote]tekteach wrote:
rainjack wrote:
tekteach wrote:
And don’t call me son, boy.
This little bitch slap right here proves the worthlessness of your attempts at debate.
Oh did I slap a bitch? I thought I slapped a boy. To suggest that you even debate is a joke. Your level of comprehension comes into question as you can’t identify an argument. And chronologically, in comparison to me, you are a boy, so the only derisive word in any statement was uttered by you when you called me son.
You get on here spouting the standard canadian “america sucks” bullshit, which is really starting to get old, and tell me your making an argument?
Where, in anything I wrote, did it say America sucks? You know absolutely nothing about me but you jump to this conclusion. Excellent deductive reasoning RJ. Now I know why you are such a great debater. It is easy to see how a 17 year old kicks your ass in a debate. By the way, learn to use the shift key; Canadian and America are proper nouns and require capitals.
Sorry sparky - my “ilk” requires more than your B.S. to be considered an argument.
Really? I find that interesting as here is a valid argument from one of your ilk.
Boston Barrister wrote:
Anyway, if I were you I’d get grounded in U.S. 1st Amendment law, which pretty well protects the press from any liability over mistakes of this kind – gross negligence. You’d have to prove they had actual knowledge it was false at the time it was published, and also published it with complete disregard for the consequences to even begin to have a case.
Boston Barrister’s argument forces me to look further into U.S. Ist. Amendment law to qualify my initial post. SEE, that is the way to argue.
Is your "ilks’ manhood naturally this fragile, or is that a personal problem?
I don’t know if the people who think like me have fragile manhoods but I know that you currently have shrinking balls. Obviously your own manhood is questionable. I never had to shoot anything into my ass to get my muscles to grow or, for that matter, get someone else to do it because I didn’t have the “balls”.
You are such a boy.
[/quote]
Since this site has a steroid board and we are all either interested and/or tolerant maybe you could take your self righteous attitude to the Estrogen board and post.
[quote]tekteach wrote:
Boy, I must have really hit home.
[/quote]
You hit nothing.
We just happen to like and respect RainJack and think you’re a shallow whiny little estro-boy.