Daily Howler - May 17, 2005

FLYWEIGHT FOLLIES (PART 1)! Your press corps works on flyweight standards. Here—let the MRC prove it:

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TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2005

E UNUM, PLURIBUS: As in the earlier case of Dan Rather, we’re puzzled when liberals, centrists and Democrats seem inclined to vouch for Newsweek in its recent blundering. Here, for example, is a pungent passage from today’s New York Times, from a front-page report by “Kit” Seelye:

SEELYE (5/17/05): Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek, said in an interview that the magazine was retracting the part of the article saying sources told Newsweek that a coming military report would say interrogators had flushed a holy book down the toilet to unnerve detainees. As it turned out, Newsweek now says, there was one source. And Mr. Whitaker said that because that source had ''backed away'' from his original account, the magazine could ''no longer stand by'' it.

As we’ve told you, your modern “press corps” has many slippery techniques for making weak stories seem stronger. (No one knows this any better than Seelye.)