WHY DIDN’T THE SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL DO HIS JOB AND VERIFY THE ACCURACY OR INACCURACY OF THE REPORT?

“Senior Pentagon Official?” – who was this Senior Pentagon official? If this was just another anonymous source I would assume that it was absolutely NOT their job to be able to verify the accuracy or inaccuracy of ANY report. Since they weren’t talking to an official pentagon spokesperson the official could probably only verify limited portions of the report of which they might have some personal knowledge. You can’t deny something you don’t know anything about. That’s the problem with talking to anonymous sources… These people can be passing incomplete facts or total gossip. And finally you find that in the end they can’t be held accountable for the accuracy or inaccuracy of their statements… as Newsweek is finding out with it’s sources.

Or so it would appear from reading the following paragraph in today’s Washington Post article:

“[Editor Mark Whitaker] said that a senior Pentagon official, for reasons that “are still a little mysterious to us,” had declined to comment after Newsweek correspondent John Barry showed him a draft before the item was published and asked, “Is this accurate or not?” Whitaker added that the magazine would have held off had military spokesmen made such a request. That official “lacked detailed knowledge” of the investigative report, Newsweek now says. Whitaker said Pentagon officials raised no objection to the story for 11 days after it was published, until it was translated by some Arab media outlets and led to the rioting.”

WHY DIDN’T THE SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIAL DO HIS JOB AND VERIFY THE ACCURACY OR INACCURACY OF THE REPORT?

Well the clerics want the culprits, turn him over.

But let’s be fair to Evan. It’s just a bunch of faceless brown wogs killing each other, how does that really stack up agains the chance to get another dig in at the Administration….?

This is exactly the correct analogy.And the MSM does this ALL the time.ALL THE TIME.

They are perfidious beyond redemption,and many innocents will die because of their amoral and thoughtless actions.And they won’t care in the least unless you consider gloating over a ‘successful’ story as a form of caring.

Newsweek’s last scoop, according to the Newsweek PR department, was the Monica story which occurred in January 1998. The truth was the article had been effectively pulled [even though Mike Isikoff had written the story] because Newsweek’s owner, the WashPo, thought it too hot. If it had not been for Drudge leaking the story on his website, Monica and Bubba’s cigar would have died on the editor’s floor. Once the leak, Newsweek was compelled to go ahead with its scoop and declare itself the avatar of the First Amendment. Its subsequent rewrite of its scoop, through Isikoff’s book, is a complete whitewash of its prostitution.

Time/Newsweek, mainly bought by dentists’ for their sitting rooms and college students for

the toilet, have no reason to exist except to put their columnists on chat shows. Their color filled tabloid formats are boring and uninformative except for those who are concerned about the exploits of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.

A statement that has been so overused, but… we have seen the enemy and he is us…Pogo

I just read that . Unbelievable. So do they hate us for going after the poppies or for the Koran or being infidels or what?

The media is so irresponsible.

Just the other day I saw a story on the cnn news site about how the Afhgan poppy fields were a threat to world stability or some such over the top crap and now we hear the US is breeding resentment by trying to get rid of the poppies and by just in general being infidels in the “decrepit” land of the war lords. And so it is not Newsweek’s fault if the natives go bonkers.

The media resented the nominal successes the US had in Afghanistan and thought they would screw things up for the Bushies and feed the liberal base and things got out of hand.

way to go assholes.

I think someone should be held accountable for this. It is like screaming fire in a theatre.

And no doubt the detainees will come up with all kinds of stories when they are released and the media will be only to happy to spread them around. get some more people killed. screw things up for a backward nation and more importantly create problems for the hated neocons.

no wonder more and more people hate the media.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7857407/site/newsweek/

Hell if I know.

I wonder how much of this is just politics. I hear that Karzai has been having some success with his reconciliation program and the hard core Taliban don’t like that.

This is just what they needed to mess up Karzai.