newsweek as the new ministry of truth
several times i’ve had passing thoughts about this, but today i finally stumbled into something that pretty much clinches what i was just going to speculate on.
to make this brief… once upon a time, newsweek ran a story that included a bit about american interrogators doing unfriendly and disrespectful things to the koran. then a bunch of people got upset. and then some people died. and then the bush administration got out in front of the world and said to the world “no way! can’t be!” and newsweek quickly took two steps backwards and said “ok, maybe we got some details wrong” and then “no, we were wrong about that whole flushing the koran thing.” ultimately issuing a full retraction.
i was going to speculate that newsweek caved under pressure from the aministration – perhaps under some sort of threat to cut off access. i dunno. just speculating.
FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran [reuters, 2005.05.25]An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.
so maybe there is something to this story after all. and maybe newsweek shouldn’t jump so quickly into the arms of the bush administration. i dunno. just speculating.