heard it through the grapevine

One thumb up and one thumb down to Kelly James, who reads the morning news on KXGL 100.9, “The Eagle”. James reported during the 7:00 hour that the mainstream media was under attack from “both the left and the right.” When he reported on the “from the right” tip, he correctly differentiated between Newsweek’s retraction of the story of the flushed Koran and the jumped-to conclusion that the incident itself didn’t happen. Newsweek, in effect, no longer stood by the reporting, James made clear, but the facts were not retracted.

Unfortunately, James became the latest balance victim when he reported in the same breath that “the left” was also attacking the media for not reporting on the British memo that verifies that the Emperor W did in fact manage the intelligence to get his war on. By conflating these two “media attacks,” James makes them appear to be the work of extremists who are just two sides of the same coin. These issues are separate and should be judged on their own merits.

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As for this morning’s editorial by the Ghostly Voice^TM of the Amarillo Globe-Republican, I initially thought the Ghost had come to its spectral senses this morning when I read “Here's a news flash: 'Newsweek' killed no one.” I thought the Ghost was reporting that the Koran-flushing allegations had been reported before and were likely true even if the specific source was bad, or that Newsweek might have been set up, or even that it was the Emperor’s failed policy—and not the reporting of same—that was killing multitudes in the Middle East.

But—alas!—this was not the case. The Ghost still sells the Big Lie:

The magazine's May 9 edition carried a small piece alleging that American service personnel tore up a Koran and flushed it down a commode to get Islamic detainees to talk.

Well, it turns out that the story appears to have been false.

But even though Newsweek practiced “shoddy journalism” (according to the Ghost) and got the story wrong (also according to the Ghost), they weren’t guilty of the violence that erupted.

Who was? Why, the heathens that live in those countries of course!:

The perpetrators of the misery in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the crazed crowds who stormed into the streets. Their reaction was even more unconscionable than Newsweek's failure to check its sources sufficiently.

The Ghost implies that the “peasants of Afghanistan and Pakistan” can’t even read, so Newsweek owes its apology solely to good American “readers of his magazine.”

Oh, Ghost.

SPACEDARK