Monday, May 16, 2005

Right-wing steamroller watch

Since it seems to be the media-wank story of the morning, watch out for right-wingers to try to drag Isikoff down. Yes, Spikey. For, if you can believe it, irresponsible reporting.

I've written about it here.

But you recognize this pattern, right? It's the fabulous Karl Rove poison the messenger approach to news. Don't like reality? Make up a new one!

Remember: The facts are biased against Republicans.

Update: Sure enough, here's Kurtz:
Newsweek apologized yesterday for an inaccurate report on the treatment of detainees that triggered several days of rioting in Afghanistan and other countries in which at least 15 people died.
Again, we don't know if the story was accurate, and Newsweek only said that their source suddenly backed down on confirming that the information came from a particular document (but now claims to have misremembered it from seeing it in some other documents). Note also that Kurtz takes for granted that the riots were caused by the Newsweek story. It is certainly probable that the story inflamed demonstrators, but without the problems with resources, it is doubtful the riots would have occurred at all.

Pay attention, wingers: This is a distraction from the fact that things in Afghanistan are a mess, and they're a mess because somebody thought haring off to Iraq was more important than finishing what we started in Afghanistan.

And more at Daily Kos (thanks to DWD in comments).

More from Juan Cole, highly recommended.