My latest Tech Central Station column is on the right-wing hysteria over the Newsweek story:
As usual, the Bush administration and the rest of the right have plausible deniability, here. They can say they’re only calling for journalists to be more responsible. They can say they’re not calling for any restrictions on the press. They can say they’re strong supporters of the First Amendment.
But how long can they keep stoking the fires of American jingoism, how long can they insinuate that the American press is unpatriotic, how long can they portray all critics of administration policy as tools of the enemy before real damage is done to our civic culture?
Once they’ve bludgeoned our press freedoms in service to respecting our enemies’ delicate religious sensibilities, it is they who will have ink on their hands.
The behavior on the right with regard to this story has been nothing less than atrocious. I’m honestly surprised with the nonsense coming from the likes of Glenn Reynolds and most of those over at The Corner.
Once we start asking the American press to self-censor based on the sensitivities of Arab rednecks, then we’ve really given some serious ground in the War on Terror.
To all of you on the right blaming Newsweek and calling for scalps: Really, grow the hell up.
And how long will many in the American press be undeniably, anti-military, anti-Republican, anti-Christian…
Should the American press be held accountable when they make factual errors? The fact that Newsweek is now changing it’s editorial policies with regards to anonymous sources is telling. And welcome to this Republican.
Shouldn’t the American press, wait for an actual response (rather than a non-denial), and print all sides of an issue?
The Newsweek fiasco, is just the latest symptom of a long cronic problem in the press. Bias, and an overzealous pursuit of the next “big story.”
Ryan,
This sounds like it’s a bit of a skewed view of the situation, though I of course could be the one in the wrong here. The way I see it: Newsweek runs a rumor as fact. Contents of said rumor are irrelevant EXCEPT that the rumor, if true, is damaging to the administration. Nothing to do with Islam or radicals, etc.
The furor from the people I’ve been reading (that is, about half the writers at Townhall) is not over the fact that they ran a story damaging to the President, or that it was a rumor, or that it was wrong, or that it offended Muslims, but over the fact that, had it been a rumor *beneficial* to the administration, they would have almost certainly fact-checked it to death. The most common comparison is that the same author, for the same publication, wrote a story that would be damaging to Clinton, which was almost certainly more substantive/credible than the Koran-down-the-tubes story, but it got pulled by the editor.
I hasten to point out that a fairly good-sized portion of “The Right” has been quietly but insistently pointing their fingers at the real criminals here — which are obviously the raving fanatics who did the acutal, you know, killing.
Anyway, I agree that those spouting off about self-censorship to avoid offending Muslims are just plain dumb. The “correct” outrage here is based on the demonstrable bias from the MSM — you’d sooner find intelligent life on Mars than a registered Republican working at a main-stream news outlet these days — and the way that played on their decision to run an unchecked story, just like Rathergate. I agree that it’s silly to say “Newsweek Lied, People Died”… BUT, it’s yet another entry to add to an already-way-too-long list.