Newsweek gets b*tchslapped by the U.S. government

[dazzleman]

I'm glad to see that Newsweek got b**chslapped.

The US media is largely inimical to our national interest, and looks for every opportunity to print stories, true or not, that will hurt us.

I don't know whether the story is true, and frankly I don't care.  I think if you're dealing with real terrorists, you can't take anything off the table, and whatever method works to get them to do what we want is OK with me, including torture.

[dazzleman]

Hopefully the government will realize that if they want to "torture" these people or whatever they want to do, they gotta kick the media out of these areas and punish whoever leaks this stuff. If we learned anything from Vietnam, hopefully it's that we can't allow the media to cover the war.

That's right.  The media wanted us to lose Vietnam, and they want us to lose this war too.  They'll do everything in their power to make it happen, so we can't trust them.  The media must be treated as an enemy, and manipulated warily if possible.

[dazzleman]

Acctually, what happened, as I pointed out in my thread, was that other news organizations went to investigate this and found that the claims were totally baseless.

I have no objection to news organizations publishing the truth.  It looks like they didn't here.

The point is that when they found a potential story that would be harmful to the interests of the US, they couldn't rush it into print fast enough.  That's typical of the liberal media.  Whether it was true or not was a secondary concern, at best.  They so badly wanted to believe it that they gave those telling the story the benefit of every doubt.

[dazzleman]

While the short term effects of such a story, if it were true (and even now that it isn't) are disasterous, in the long run knowing the truth will be beneficial. If we cannot deliver the whole story on an action to the public to keep their support, then the action needs to stop.

Newsweek should be ashamed for reporting something not true. If it were true, there is nothing wrong with publishing it. You cannot manipulate truth and be on the "right" side.

I agree that there isn't anything wrong with publishing the truth.

The problem with the media is that even when purporting to tell the truth, they publish certain aspects of the truth and ignore others, thereby creating a distorted picture.  And the intent is to slant the news, and cause the viewer or reader to arrive at the conclusion that those publishing the story want them to arrive at.

In complex situations, the concept of truth is not always black and white.

[dazzleman]

So, Newsweek has apologized and retracted and kowtowed like a Japanese woman and they're still getting savaged? I don't know why but this is the kind of this that really pisses me off. What do they want them to do? Intimidation of the press...disgusting. The stuff of 1930's Germany. Personally I want my media to be unhindered in what they feel they can say without being rolled over by the White House like an iron steamroller over a fat lob of dough.

I'd agree with you if not for the nefarious political agenda of much of the media.  I just don't trust those people.  I don't view the media as a watchdog against corruption, but part of the corruption itself.  If they didn't print lies because those lies are thought to advance their political agenda, they wouldn't have to worry about being intimidated.