Connect: It's impossible to know the truth of Newsweek magazine's story that the Koran had been desecrated by US military bullies at Guantanamo Bay.
On May 9th, it reported that "interrogators", in a bid "to rattle suspects", had flushed a copy of the Muslim holy book down a toilet. Following the 17 resulting deaths from anti-US rioting in Muslim countries, Newsweek has reeled in its report.
But the damage has been done. Newsweek first offered a qualified apology before a fuller retraction. "As to whether anything like this [ the toilet treatment] happened, we just don't know," said its editor, Mark Whitaker. Meanwhile, from Washington to remote Muslim villages across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia and Palestine, the report and its retraction have unleashed fury.
The Bush administration has used Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita to attack Newsweek's journalism. The story is "demonstrably wrong", he said, arguing that the magazine has just "tried instead to water it down". DiRita's condemnation and that of others aims at diminishing all of the media. Mind you, just now the US media is reeling from a variety of scandals.
It was, after all, just 12 months ago that the New York Times acknowledged that its reporting in a number of stories leading up to the attack on Iraq "was not as rigorous as it should have been". Then there's been the tarnishing and forced retirement of Dan Rather, of CBS News, in which four reporters were fired after Rather presented a story casting doubts on Bush's military service.
Foreign reporter Jack Kelly, of USA Today, has been found out inventing stories, interviews and witnesses from around the world. At CNN, chief news executive Eason Jordan was forced to resign from his 23-year career after he claimed that American soldiers had deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq. Then, of course, there was Jayson Blair plagiarising away for the New York Times.
It's certainly easy to condemn the US media these days. Yet the Bush cabal are even worse! Consider Jeff Gannon: he was the White House "reporter" planted by a Republican front outfit to ask George Bush "softball" questions at press conferences. In the last two years a federal watchdog has accused the US government of distributing fake news packages, using actors as journalists.
Bush holds fewer Washington press conferences than any of his modern predecessors. Yet he courts local media, such as small city newspapers, because these are usually easier to steamroll. During last year's election campaign, he avoided the leading papers but invited reporters from smaller swing state publications to interview him on board Air Force One. Flattery is just basic PR.
Officials of the current US government were earlier this year shown to have paid three senior hacks to design or promote policies. Pundit Armstrong Williams was given more than $240,000 (€190,000) of taxpayers' money to push the agenda of Bush's education department. "It's propaganda," said Melanie Sloan of watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. She's right.
Essentially this White House, cheered on by the US's conservative media - and they mean "conservative"! - has tried to subvert all critical mainstream journalism. It amounts to a huge campaign of news management and a concerted attempt to control the media in a manner that is not conducive to democracy. Bush's arch-manipulator, Karl Rove, is presumably the architect of the plan.
"We have a conservative media and also a mainstream media, which is also now fairly conservative because it has been forced to deny being liberal," Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, told the Observer newspaper in February. That's about it, really. Bush, Rove, Cheney and their ruthless cheerleaders have guaranteed this massive imbalance.
Newsweek may or may not be right in its initial report about the desecration of the Koran. There is no way of knowing. However, even if it is wrong, Abu Ghraib jail, Baghram air base and Guantanamo Bay prison camp cannot be excused by blaming the media. In fact, they, like the Bush administration's entire Middle East barbarism, make it highly plausible that Newsweek was right.
Throughout the Muslim world people believe that Newsweek's apology has been made because of pressure from the US administration. Indeed, many people in the Western world suspect the same. Despite repeated US media scandals, given the record of this American government in trying to manipulate and bully the media, that's understandable.
When we hear that Burhan Fasa'a, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Company, reported during the siege of Fallujah that dead family members were buried in their gardens because people could not leave their homes, the alleged Koran desecration becomes increasingly plausible. Refugees have also reported that civilians carrying white flags were gunned down by US soldiers.
Even worse: in Fallujah, Iraqi corpses were, according to American journalist Dahr Jamail, tied to US tanks and paraded around like trophies. Think on that. Such reports can be believed or dismissed. But the fact that they exist and are plausible - which they are - means that even more than a sacred book is going down the toilet because of ongoing American belligerence.