So many culprits

No one involved in the row that followed the publication in Newsweek of an erroneous report about the desecration of the Koran by US guards in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has emerged unscathed from it. The reputation of the magazine lies in tatters. It failed in the first place to ask whether it was proper to carry a news item of such a sensitive nature even assuming that it were true.As it transpired, its publication provoked anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan leaving at least 20 dead and scores injured.
The magazine subsequently acknowledged that it had erred. Its reporters had relied on a US government official who, according to the editor, Mark Whitaker, had an "incomplete knowledge of the situation". Whitaker did offer an apology but, to make matters worse, failed to retract the story on the grounds that he did not know for certain what the magazine got wrong. His statement provoked such an outcry that Newsweek did finally retract the story last Monday. But the credibility of the magazine and of the American media in general suffered yet another blow.
Several surveys conducted in recent times indeed reveal that American journalism, which was once the envy of the democratic world, is less and less trustworthy in the eyes of the public. Ideological polarisation and the blurring of lines between corporate interest and journalistic pursuit are often cited as factors to explain this trend. The result is that when a single respected news organisation is caught with its pants down, it is the media as a whole which invites the charge of professional misconduct.
But the critics of the media, whether foreign or domestic, also mislead the world when they seek to occupy the high moral ground. The anti-American protesters in the Muslim countries would have sounded a little more convincing had they embraced the cause of free speech. But those in the forefront of the protests are often a bigoted lot who are prepared to maim or even kill people who dare to dissent from their brand of religion or politics.
In the case of the Newsweek report, the individual who fanned the flames of violent agitation was no frenzied mullah but the suave cricketer-turned-liberal politician Imran Khan. At a press conference in Islamabad, he brandished a copy of the magazine and hit out at America in terms that promptly provoked Islamic radicals in Afghanistan and later in Pakistan to go on a rampage. Imran Khan doubtless found in the Newsweek report an opportunity to get even with his rival, General Pervez Musharraf, and, in the bargain, to revive his political fortunes which have touched rock bottom.
One sane voice in this controversy is that of the Toronto-based journalist Irshad Manji. She argues that it does not take much to incite violence, or to withhold forgiveness, when people are led to believe in the sacrosanct nature of certain aspects of religion. She favours peaceful protests against real or perceived injuries inflicted by the Americans on Muslims. But she would also like them to speak out against "the bloody, fiery riots that, in the name of honouring Islam, are killing an increasing number of Muslims and non-Muslims".
None of all this can bring much cheer to the Bush administration, which rushed to deplore the ''tepid'' retraction of the Newsweek report. Its own relationship with the media has not been above board. A great deal of documentation is now available to show how it has sought to manipulate, brow-beat and otherwise mock at the traditions of a free press without a care for constitutional propriety. And so it is that the many culprits of Newsweek''s horrendous faux pas have more than egg on the face; they have not a little blood on their hands as well.