Newsweek switch
on Quran story
pleases nobody

KABUL - The firestorm of anger continued Monday over Newsweek’s handling of a story that alleged U.S. interrogators desecrated the Quran as Muslim leaders and the Bush administration both blasted the magazine’s partial retraction of the piece.

Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan said that U.S. pressure was behind the magazine's shift while presidential spokesman Scott McClellan called it “puzzling” that “while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refuse to retract the story.” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the story “appalling”

The report in Newsweek’s May 9 issue said that investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators “had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.” It sparked protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.

But Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true.

Newsweek said its information had come from a “knowledgeable government source” who told the magazine that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Quran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.

But Newsweek said the source later said he could not be certain he had seen an account of the incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts.

Afghans were unconvinced.

FREE VIDEO Media accuracy May 16: The Poynter Institute’s Aly Colon talks to MSNBC-TV’s Lester Holt about Newsweek’s story on the alleged desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay. MSNBC

“It’s not acceptable now that the magazine says it’s made a mistake,” said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer and journalist in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday. “No one will accept it.”

Muslims consider the Quran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.

Last week’s bloody anti-American protests across Afghanistan were the worst since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

“We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst,” Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the apology.

White House criticism
The White House said Monday that Newsweek’s response was insufficient.

“I think there’s a certain journalistic standard that should be met. In this instance it was not,” McClellan said.

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