WASHINGTON – The debate over a retracted Newsweek report broadened Tuesday into an argument about media and government ethics, with the White House urging the magazine to help undo the harm to American interests, and critics accusing the administration of trying to deflect attention from its own deceptions.
Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters he welcomed Newsweek’s formal retraction of a news item saying military investigators had confirmed that a U.S. interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet.
While that was “a good first step,” McClellan said, the White House wants Newsweek “to help repair the damage” by explaining “what happened and why they got it wrong, particularly to people in the region.”
Newsweek “can also talk about policies and practices of the United States military,” which “goes out of its way to treat the holy Quran with great care and respect,” McClellan said.
Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine had already explained in this week’s issue that the military has special guidelines for handling the Quran. He also questioned the administration’s sharp rhetoric, saying: “Are they making the story in the Arab street that the administration is trying to silence reporters about these sensitive issues, and is that going to keep the unrest going?”
Whitaker said Newsweek Chairman Richard Smith is drafting a letter to the staff that will include the handling of anonymous sources, such as the unnamed government official who gave reporter Michael Isikoff inaccurate information about the purported Quran incident. Whitaker said the magazine would try to “be a little more transparent to our readers” in providing details about sources and their motivations.
Lawmakers of both parties entered the fray on Capitol Hill. U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., charged the White House with hypocrisy, saying: “The administration is chastising Newsweek for a story that contained a fact that turned out to be false. This is the same administration that lied to the Congress, the United Nations and the American people by fabricating reasons to send us to war.”
McClellan rejected such criticism in an interview, saying: “We’ve taken steps to make sure we improve our intelligence gathering. This should not be used as a distraction from what occurred here. It gave an impression of our military that is wrong.”
Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio, chairman of the House Republican Conference, urged every congressional office to cancel its Newsweek subscription. “Retraction and regrets will not atone for the reckless behavior of an irresponsible reporter and an overzealous publication,” she said in a statement.
The Newsweek report triggered protests that turned violent in Afghanistan and other countries, causing at least 16 deaths, although the degree to which the article was responsible remains unclear.
Pentagon officials have blamed Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co. (publisher of The Herald), for sparking the violence, but Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that his senior commander in Afghanistan had told him the riots were “not at all tied to the article.”
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