Per MSNBC TV, Newsweek just announced that only the editor or managing editor can sign off on anonymous sources. “The name and position of such a source will be shared with the top editor,” quotes the Houston Chronicle, “and the magazine will try to characterize the source appropriately.”
Meanwhile, via my daughter, Gawker alleges that Newsweek‘s retraction really meant, “The feds beat us within an inch of our lives. Can you guess who made us wear a ball gag?” More below:
See also: Ron Brynaert’s diary today, “A Deconstruction of the ‘Newsweek’ Riots.”
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Filched from Gawker:
| Newsweek Says | Translation |
| In the week since our Periscope item about alleged abuse of the Qur’an at Guantanamo Bay became a heated topic of national conversation, it will come as no surprise to you that we have been engaged in a great deal of soul-searching and reflection. | The feds beat us within an inch of our lives. Can you guess who made us wear a ball gag? |
| As most of you know, we have unequivocally retracted our story. In the light of the Pentagon’s denials… | The truth is flexible, and we journalists have to bend to that truth. |
| We have also offered a sincere apology to our readers and especially to anyone affected by violence that may have been related to what we published. | Want a cookie? |
| Veteran reporter Michael Isikoff relied on a well-placed and historically reliable government source. | We know we’re right, and so do you, GITMO LEAK RAT! |
| …we mistakenly took [an anonymous] official’s silence for confirmation. | Silence equals agreement. No means yes. Everything old is new. |
| In the weeks to come we will be reviewing ways to improve our news-gathering processes overall. | Dick Cheney will have final approval over every last charticle. |
Earlier Gawker story: ‘Newsweek’ Kinda Sorta Makes Retraction-ish Statement
NOTE: Steal the code. (Right-click, and choose “View Source.”) Now we know how to make a table at BooTrib! Clever devils we are.
It’s disgusting, sending a message to all their reporters,
that they will not back them up if the White House doesn’t
like what they write.
yech.
it’s a message to their readers. “You can’t trust anything we tell you anymore. If the Ministry of Truth doesn’t like what we print they’ll make us retract it.”
Trade Secrets [of Journalism]
So much they didn’t learn! I never taught them how to write in the kind of objective, even-handed manner that keeps all biases and personal opinions discreetly laced through every sentence. I declined to demonstrate how the strategic use of such phrases as “he asserted” and “he claimed” and “he sputtered” can signal to readers that the quoted person is lying. I never told them how to manipulate an expense account to make a debauched night in Vegas disappear into the category labeled “Tolls.”
He concludes in a more serious tone:
James Joyce said something similar regarding art -that the supreme question
about a work of art is “from how deep a life did it spring.”
Thompson goes on to discuss Blogs and Journalistic Standards
Highly recommended! I especially like:
“The truth is, you can’t teach someone to write. You learn by doing it. You put the hands on the keyboard and go. You don’t need a professor — you just need to keep typing.”
So true.
at least on some level, but not every would-be writer practices it. My wife and I joke that we have an edge on many would-be writers in that we’ve actually had stuff published (nothing you would likely have heard of, unfortunately).
Some realize it more than others. In his later years Dashiell Hammett, of Sam Spade and The Thin Man fame, kept a typewriter around long after drink and depression had forced him out of writing. When someone asked him why he kept the typewriter, he said, “To remind myself I used to be a writer.”
Reading good writers and falling in love with good
sentences is a good way to learn to write well.
Once again, I’m reminded of Galileo. Even after the Inquisition forced him to retract his assertion that the earth revolves around the sun . . . the earth still revolved around the sun, and nothing he could say could retract the facts.
Torturers were flushing Korans down the toilet, and worse. You know it, and I know it, and they all know it, and they all know we know it.
Still, it makes me wonder who made Newsweek retract, and how, and it makes me yearn for the days when the Washington Post (Newsweek’s parent company) would have stood by a story like this in spite of the heat.
I used to listen to Radio Moscow. Their commentator Vladimir Posner, who grew up in the United States before his parents moved back to the USSR when he was a teenager, used to parrot the party line in his commentaries. Oh, he sugar-coated it and made it sound much more palatable to American ears than the commentaries in broadcasts aimed at English-speaking listeners in Asia and Africa, but it was the party line all the same. After the fall of the USSR when he was free to speak his mind, he was asked about saying things he knew were untrue. “I did it,” he said, paraphrasing, “and I didn’t really feel that I had a choice, and it was something I will have to live with.”
I hope someday we can hear something similar from the editors of Newsweek.
I have a lot more sympathy for him. He could easily have ended up drugged and straightjacketed in a mental asylum. The editors of Newsweek, on the other hand, only stand to lose invitations to press dinners and getting called on at one of the two press conferences Bush is likely to schedule in the next year.
If he wanted to keep his job and maintain his lifestyle (which by all accounts was pretty good for the time and place) he had to do what he had to do. He occasionally referred to his children, and family can be a powerful incentive. In fact the cynical part of my brain (the part that has the open, trusting part cowering under the bed most days) keeps going back to the Stargate episode where General Hammond is threatening to resign from the Air Force. When O’Neill asks why, he points to his two grandchildren playing in the yard and tells him Senator Kinsey proved that, if he wanted, he could kidnap them, or worse.
Apologies if you don’t follow Stargate SG-1; let’s just say that it’s a demonstration that there are plenty of ways to “motivate” someone, and money isn’t always the motivating factor.
Susanhbu-admirers want to know!
You know, all this time I’ve just assumed that you were of Chinese ancestry!
It never occurred to me that “Hu” might be an abbreviation!
Come to think of it, I could be known around here as Matt Ho. In fact, I kind of like the sound of that!
(Hogan is my last name.)
This should obviously have been addressed to Susan, not Sybil. I’ve made no assumptions about Sybil’s ancestry!
I should also add that I think Susan’s daughter is way cool.
She is TOTALLY cool. Besides being a marketing whiz — her mind goes 90 MPH thinking up great marketing ideas (that also work) — she does most of the writing and Web design on the site, works with the photographers, and more.
was listed somewhare and didn’t see it, but figured… Now it’s there. Or maybe it was there all along and…
Of note, or note-worthy, or note-able, The Incredible String Band, XTC, Kate Bush and of course, Laurie Anderson…
She is setting up another page on the site with photos of dogs that customers have sent in and she’s including the Boo’s dog — i’ll announce that!
I suppose Newsweek will now be armtwisted into accepting Focus on the Family advertising as a part of its penance.
Check their ads to see if they carry Lougheed Martin,
Exxon etc. Then you can judge the source of the pressure put upon them.