From the Chicago Trib:

“Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” said editor Mark Whitaker.

Ace coins “Al-Newsweek“:

Al-Newsweek’s reckless manipulation of the intelligence it received now has a bodycount, and untold consequences for US security.

The liberal media is very big on exposing hypocrisy– demolishing Bill Bennet’s reputation as a moral man, for example, because he went a little batsh– crazy when he saw the blinking lights of the slot machines.

It’s about time they dug into their own hypocrisy. They hold themselves out as truth-tellers and as professionals with a strong code of journalistic ethics that would never, ever allow them to run a story just because they’re on a deadline or just because it will get attention or just because it pleases them to believe its true.

As do others, Cam Edwards hopes for a firing. Not resignations or stepping down. Canned.

Michael Isikoff, Mark Whitaker, and everybody associated with this story gets canned. No “resignations”, no “stepping down”. Fired. Walk your butts out the door and don’t let the door hit it on your way out. This is not “Rathergate” where “only” an election was at stake. Lives have been lost. Costs must be paid.

LHM voices what some others have started asking:

Is Newsweek responsible for the deaths or shall we blame the instigators and the rioters themselves who are using this crisis to manipulate not only public opinion but their own political agenda?

Wallie announces a takeover bid! Hah!

Viacom/CBS announced an unsolicited offer to aquire all outstanding assets of Newsweek Corporation in a surprise takeover bid. Larry S. Kramer, the head of Viacom’s CBS News Division, explains:

“We felt like it was a natural fit. I saw Mark Whitaker’s[Newsweek’s Editor] comments come across the wire and I was immediately impressed. Mark said ‘We’re not saying it absolutely happened but we can’t say that it absolutely didn’t happen either.‘ Well, obviously that dovetails nicely with our newsroom motto of ‘Fake, But Accurate‘. It just seemed like a logical fit.”

And Bill Roggio backs up Ace’s claim that Newsweek is following (if inadvertantly) Al-Qaeda’s training manual.

The Newsweek staff is also guilty of being gullible enough to swallow whole al Qaeda’s tactics of crying abuse and torture. The tactics are directly out of al Qaeda’s training manual, and are designed to subvert western governments and their citizens, weaken their resolve and inflame the Muslim world against the West. The following is quoted directly from The al Qaeda Training Manual, Lesson Eighteen, PRISONS AND DETENTION CENTERS, which was seized in a raid in England by the Manchester Metropolitan Police:

1 . At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.

2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.

Al Qaeda’s methods of crying foul while in custody and after released are common knowledge in government and media circles, yet the media consistently snaps up the opportunity to report these stories, without considering the real world consequences that may result.

Glenn Reynolds a couple of days ago observed:

These guys don’t understand the difference between covering a minor domestic “gotcha” story and national security matters. To them, there isn’t a difference. If they’re that clueless, it’s no surprise that they don’t know how to respond when they’re caught.

And he concludes:

As I’ve warned before, if Americans conclude that the press is, basically, on the side of the enemy, the consequences are likely to be dire.

Austin Bay responds to Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan appears to miss the point of my original post. The Abu Ghraib debacle-Newsweek fiasco comparison rests on this: Newsweek failed to understand the global information grid– they were operating on a “print” template. Rumsfeld thought the England and other abuse photos were on Kodak paper; the Abu Ghraib abuse photos were on pixels. Rumsfeld didn’t understand the “information consequences” of Abu Ghraib photos, and how easily they are reproduced on the Internet. Newsweek didn’t understand the information consequences of its report, either, in a world where gossip moves at the speed of light. Rumsfeld and Newsweek were both handling terrible allegations with a restricted view of the audience (a 1970s, US-oriented template) and a poor appreciation of the allegations’ impact.

N.Z. observes that “Fake but Accurate” is so 2004.

Andrew Sullivan offers Newsweek some entirely superfluous assistance in their race to the journalistic bottom:

“Even if this incident turns out to be false, our previous policies have made it perfectly plausible.”

False but plausible: it’s the new fake but accurate!

Lots more going on, but you’ll have to dive into the rabbit hole from here…