Muslims around the world, specifically angry about this story, marched in protest of this action. During some of those protests, people were killed.
People were killed when Police/Security fired into what started out as peaceful university student demonstrations. The demonstrations became more militant from there, and the Police/Security shot more demonstrators dead.
Ooops. It turns out the story was false.
An aspect of the story was false, namely that government reports verified that the flushing incident occurred. There have been ex detainees speaking about this event and others to do with the Koran for months or even years now and a lot of these reports are currently under investigation.
So basically, Newsweek saw an opportunity to make George Bush look bad, and they seized it. Making Bush look bad was all that mattered.
I could just as easily say that reports about biological weapon trucks being found, or nuclear weapon caches being unearthed were reported purely to make John Kerry look bad. I’d be wrong though. I suspect the biggest reason that these unverified stories relying on anonymous or discredited witnesses (in the case of Chalabi) are printed is to make headlines and to increase readership/ratings.
Too bad in their sloppy zeal, they caused the deaths of innocents.
What caused the death of innocents (the demonstrators) was that they were shot and killed at a peaceful demonstration which then later became more militant partially as a response to the original shootings.
Side Issue: How jacked up is the Islamic religion if the idea of some random person flushing copies of your koran/bible/whatever means you have to take to the streets and kill people. Get over yourselves, freaks. Sheesh.
Firstly these people didn’t take to the streets and kill people, they took to the streets and were killed. But as the articles Dorain linked us to state, the issue is far more complex than some random person flushing copies of the Koran.
To mention just a very few things that have created enough anger to cause people to demonstrate:
-many innocent Afghanis and others have been imprisoned during this war on terror, sometimes for years.
-there are ongoing allegations of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and elsewhere that involve dogs, menstrual blood and other physical, sexual and religious humiliations.
-there is a significant section of the communities in Afghanistan and Iraq that believe that foreign troops should immediately leave their countries.
-there is a significant section of the communities in Afghanistan and Iraq that believe their day to day lives have become more difficult and dangerous since the wars began.
As I said, these are just a very few examples of reason why people might be angry enough to demonstrate (and in fact, have demonstrated quite regularly in Iraq in particular). Add to this what a very religious population considers to be a grave insult to their faith and the fire will be fueled.
I imagine this will have no negative impact on Newsweek, but it clearly shows that the leftist media is in full effect and they will do anything to discredit politicians they dislike- including be sloppy with facts and rush stories to print regardless of their veracity.
I’m a regular watcher of Eric Burns’ Fox News Watch, and one of the things that all of the panelists regularly complain about is the reliance on anonymous sources, and printing “exciting” and “sexed up” stories to get ratings. That they feel that a pressure exists on journalists to be unethical to get numbers, particularly as the number of people using the MSM for news is dropping drastically. They discuss how this is a sin of both the conservative and liberal press. While this Koran case might be an example of an anti-Bush story getting printed for political reasons, I suspect it has more to do with sensationalism to sell copy.

When you say that the left has the habit of publishing unverified untruths to hurt George Bush, let me refer back to my earlier point about Chalabi. Judith Miller (from the NYT) wrote a plethora of blatantly false stories (based in part on Chalabi’s self serving lies) to promote the Iraq war campaign. Her stories were front page reports that completely bolstered George Bush’s arguments running up to the war, and exaggerated or invented stories that vindicated his position after the invasion began. The front page of the NYT gets carried by a lot of papers, and has the potential to create a lot of opinion. Frankly I can’t understand why Judith Miller hasn’t been sacked.

If questioning alleged torture in prisons is an example of the “leftist media” killing innocents in their lust to hurt Bush, then how much more complicit in causing the death of innocents is the “rightist media” with their endless drumbeat for war and their spewing of patriotic garbage based on sloppy rushed stories printed regardless of their veracity? How much more monolithic was the pro-Bush, pro-war “rightist media” when it fully included the so-called leftist NYT along with the other great bastions of socialism; CNN, MSNBC and ABC?

The leftist position in what is probably one of the most serious decisions a democracy can make, was to be against the war. The MSM was unanimously pro-war. The Leftist Bias in the Media doesn’t exist on serious questions. The whining by the right about the liberal media spreading their gay agenda by exposing children to sponge bob, or the liberal media destroying the war by complaining about torture, exposes them (at best) as petty minded cry babies with no sense of proportion.

What a bloody joke.