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Newsweek's error

"Let's do a thought experiment about the worst example of journalistic malfeasance in recent years -- and considering the competition from Jayson Blair and Dan Rather, that's saying a lot," New York Post columnist John Podhoretz writes.

"Let's say that the item that Newsweek magazine disavowed on Sunday and retracted [Monday] -- the item by Michael Isikoff and John Barry that said an American interrogator of terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay had flushed the Koran down the toilet -- was actually true. It wasn't. But let's say it was.

"Would factual accuracy have justified publishing the item in Newsweek or anywhere else?" Mr. Podhoretz asked.

"That publication led to the furtherance of the notion, extraordinarily dangerous to Americans abroad, that our government is in the habit of desecrating the Muslim Holy Book -- and to scores of people getting killed and hundreds getting injured in riots that extended from Afghanistan to Gaza.

"The answer seems obvious now, doesn't it?

"Newsweek ran an incendiary item about an American official desecrating the Koran, and this incendiary item did what incendiary items are supposed to do. It blew up.

"Only it didn't blow up the target it was intended to blow up. The intended target was in Washington. We'd have to know the identity of Newsweek's supposedly 'good and credible' source to know precisely whom the source was trying to injure (and you can bet that, no matter what evil nonsense this supposedly 'good' source was peddling, Newsweek will protect his name forever)."

Liberal hysteria