False Reporting on Terror War Not That Uncommon

Dick Morris reminds us that the Newsweak false story is just one of at least 4 such false stories that the press has thrown out there in recent months in an attempt to damage their governments:

• In the spring of 2004, the BBC reported that Blair had ordered his intelligence people to “sex up” reports of the Iraqi program to make weapons of mass destruction. For months, Blair was on the defensive because of the report, and the intelligence operative who was the alleged source of the story committed suicide.

It took a parliamentary commission to debunk the story and to force a BBC retraction. The ongoing damage to Blair’s credibility likely helped to account for his marginal showing in the most recent U.K. election.

• In September 2004, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” television program used forged and phony documents to try to besmirch Bush’s record in the Texas National Guard. It was only the careless error of the forger in printing the suffix “th” above the line that led to the truth.

• In the week before the election, The New York Times, the citadel of journalistic accuracy, ran a front-page story alleging that 370 tons of explosives had disappeared from an Iraqi storage site during the American occupation. The implication was that the carelessness of the Bush administration had put into the hands of the insurgent terrorists the very weapons now being used to kill our troops. But the Pentagon soon established that the weapons either had been removed early in the U.S. occupation or had never been there when our troops arrived. The Times story led John Kerry to change his TV ads and focus his endgame campaign on the allegation.

• And now Newsweek has published an inflammatory story that has led to massive anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan — the first since the war — protesting the seeming defilement of sacred texts. Sixteen people are dead because Newsweek got the story wrong, and the image of the United States is damaged in the Islamic world. And Newsweek refuses to hold anyone to account for this outrageous error, least of all its own senior management.

Each of those “mistakes” was biased in favor of the left and was committed in the haste of liberal journalists to get some ammunition to discredit Bush and the Iraq war. But when the same reporter who wrote the current story filed the first disclosure of the Monica Lewinsky affair with his editors at Newsweek, the magazine piously refused to run the story.

And here's a telling statement:

In fact, in all the years of the Clinton presidency, I cannot recall a single instance of a similarly inaccurate high-profile story attacking the Democratic president.

And what has the press' reaction been? They've gone after the bad guys in the Newsweak story: the White House! Yes, they haven't been critical of Newsweak at all but have instead turned their fury on the White House for daring to suggest that Newsweak had screwed up and cause America harm in the world. This is an actual question from yesterday's press briefing at the White House (from Drudge):

Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

Here's another one from the same reporter:

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

How about if the White House reporters try heading on over to the Newsweak headquarters and ask them some tough questions?