Newsweek Story on Koran Desecration

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Is anybody else as offended by this? Newsweek goes ahead to print a story about some soldiers desecrating the Koran. This story then leads to mass rioting and death of our soldiers oversees after which Newsweek ends up finding out the story wasn't even true.

To be honest, I really think there should be a law set in place for this. If family loses a loved one in a situation like this and their death happened while trying to keep the peace after a riot outbroke as a result of this, I really think the particular media outlets should have to pay a cool million in punitive damages, if not more, to each family for each live lost. Its one thing to criticize the government on policy, but its an entirely different thing to publish a story which has no other purpose to inflame a situation in a time of war in a way that would result in the loss of lives. The people defending Newsweek are trying to claim that they had no idea that muslims in that part of the world would be as offended as they were - wtf? They may be publishing a repeal of the story over here but that same repeal won't be published overseas; they're minds are made up.

Just another example of the media in this country jumping the gun on something in a desperate bid to try and get Bush between a rock and a hard place.

IMO this is worse than anything in the past though. Mocked-up national guard papers were bad enough but they didn't threaten lives as directly as this did.

I wonder what would happen if Al-Jaazera (sp?) printed a story about muslims desecrating the bible. I am sure there would be no riots and demands here.

I think thought that there are laws to cover false news stories (possibly under the slander and lible laws). Newsweek should be held responsible for their actions here and are defenseless. Lets see if they are held responsible however.

the liberal media (ie most of it) wants Bush out and will do whatever they can to accomplish that goal. Journalistic integrity is dead. At least the blogs are honest and admit that they are reporting opinion instead of news.

There would be allot of protests if muslims did that to a bible. Im totally sure about that.

I think the traditional news sources are under pressure to get news out quicker than ever before becuase of all the alternatives sources that now exist. Because of this rush to beat the blogs and on-line services, more and more errors are accuring. I think the stategy to try to beat the alternatives on the alternatives' field is an error on the traditional sources part. They can't beat the alternatives on timelyness but there will still be a place for news that is as trustworthly at possible. Right now, the traditional sources aren't first AND they aren't the most acurate. IMO

I think intent is needed for slander or lible? I think Newsweek was just sloppy about checking sources.

I can't see large protest over the Bible. I don't remember the last time there was one. Why do you think there would be one, Tomcat? (Don't get me wrong. I think desecrating any holy site or book is wrong and would be pleased to see *peaceful* protest.)

BeeBee

Yeah but would we be going to war and killing people over it on the premise that they were the heathen non-christian indidel and had to die for their insubordination to Yaweh or Jesus? That's what we're dealing with, its a hair-trigger situation. We're walking on a lot more than eggshells diplomatically (and its not even foreign policy as much as religion) where stories like this aren't doing any legitimate muckraking and have only one thing that could be gained - loss of lives on our side.