Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Rich Galen

Wednesday May 18, 2005

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There are a couple of issues which attend to this Newsweek thing. First, there is the First Amendment to the Constitution. For those of us who haven't actually read the First Amendment since 8th Grade Social Studies, here it is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is a pretty big bag of freedoms in one Amendment. Religion, speech, press, assembly, and lobbying (which is how giant corporations "redress their grievances").

Note that the words "freedom of the press" do not appear, even though they are clearly assumed by the context. Note, too, the word "press" falls behind "religion" and "speech" in the litany of freedoms the government "shall make no law respecting."

If someone in the House or Senate calls for hearings into the Newsweek debacle, members of the elite press will go on cable television and wring their hands raw complaining that the act of hauling the Newsweek editors and reporters in front of a Congressional committee is a violation of their First Amendment rights. They might be correct.

Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post Corporation. The fact that it happens to be in the business of providing news and entertainment should not give it any particular immunity from answering questions about its operations. Especially when those operations may well have contributed to the deaths of 20 or more people.

If Newsweek were a chemical company, and something it did led to the same number of deaths, I guarantee you Donald Graham, the Chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Corporation would be sitting in front of a Congressional committee by next Wednesday

Second, there is the fact that I know and like many of the senior writers at Newsweek including Michael Isikoff, who wrote the item in question. We both spoke at the Kennedy School at Harvard in 2002. In the Travelogue about that event I called Isikoff "the best investigative reporter on the planet."

Not infallible, but the best.

Michael Hirsh, the senior foreign affairs correspondent for Newsweek is a relative-by-marriage. Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman have treated me with grace and respect whenever we have been in the same place at the same time.

All of that disclosure notwithstanding, Newsweek screwed up. Royally.

After two days of consideration, Newsweek finally "retracted" the story, but not before Evan Thomas, the assistant managing editor, wrote a curious piece about how the magazine was misled but not misguided in publishing the item.

Newsweek should give up the anonymous source who provided the wrong information in the first place.

Here should be the rule: If you use an anonymous source and the source either (a) lies to you by design, or (b) gives you false information in error leading to the deaths of some two-dozen people, then your obligation to maintain the secrecy of that source is over.

In fact, Newsweek has an obligation to divulge the source of this story, given the effects it has had and will continue to have.

SIDEBAR

One of the allegations was that an American had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. At Mullings Central, where we are blessed with low-flow toilets, I can't flush plain water half the time without causing the whole Potomac River to back up.
I think there may be a market for the GITMO FLUSH-ALL TOILET here in the good old U.S. of A.

END SIDEBAR

This incident was not caused by the Bush Administration or by anyone in the US House or Senate - Republican or Democrat.

It may have been good journalism gone bad; or bad journalism in the first place. Either way, it is Newsweek's responsibility to its readers and to its profession to fix its procedures so this cannot happen again.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Harvard Travelogue, the Newsweek explanation, and a New York Times backgrounder on Michael Isikoff. Also a rare Video Mullfoto and the required Catchy Caption of the day.

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