Newsweek to the US.

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: TheGameIs21

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
I am not trying to go all conspiracy theory on this thread, but is there ANY (however remote) that Newsweek was pressured into retracting the article because it relied on questionable sources?

OMG... You are seriously saying that it is OK to report something that you aren't 100% sure of and that you haven't 100% checked out your sources?

Are you even reading what he wrote?

He said -- IS THERE any possiblilty that Newsweek was FORCED TO RETRACT A TRUE STORY

What legitimate news organization would do such a thing? It would go against everything they stand for.

I think again we have another over-zealous article in which fact checking was thrown out the door to sell a few copies and possibly smear the administration.

It is a shame what the media is doing to themselves. Eventually nobody will care what they have to say.

Who are you trying to kid? Newsweek got their info from a "senior" administration official who claimed it came from the Guantenamo investigation.

It isn't the news media doing this to themselves. It's the Bush administration doing this to all of us.

What are their names?

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Genx87

What are their names?
[/quote]

You'd have to ask Isikoff. I didn't talk to him/her/it.

More info, as usual, in foreign press accounts than we're allowed to have here in the "Homeland".

Holy mess: US mag blames Imran

HIDANAND RAJGHATTA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, MAY 16, 2005 10:39:28 AM ]

WASHINGTON: Newsweek magazine has blamed former cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan for sparking off the conflagration arising from reports about the desecration of the Holy Quran in Guantanamo Bay by US interrogators.

"The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf," the magazine said in its latest issue reviewing last week's turbulent events.

"Brandishing a copy of that week's Newsweek (dated May 9), Khan read a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo prison had placed the Quran on toilet seats and even flushed one.

"This is what the US is doing," the magazine quoted Khan as exclaiming, "desecrating the Koran."

Khan's remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan, it said.

Islamic foes of the US-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of US forces, and riots began breaking outlast week, it added.

Incidentally, Karzai has also offered the same explanation for the riots. In a review of its last week's story that has caused a furore in the Islamic world, the magazine has also said the Pentagon denied the specific allegation of the
holy book being flushed down the toilet and suggested it (Newsweek) may have got the details wrong.

Explaining how the story originated, the magazine said its veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo.

Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantanamo prison) were looking into the allegations.

So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior US government official who was knowledgeable about the matter.

The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet.

A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but Newsweek National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?"

The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses.

Not true, said the official. But he was silent about the rest of the item. So the reference to the Quran abuse remained in the story.

The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report, Newsweek said. Following the conflagration, the magazine said Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Quran, including a toilet incident.

But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.

Told of what the source said, the magazine quoted Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita as saying, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

The magazine hedged its acknowledgement that it might have erred by suggesting that given all that has been reported about the treatment of detainees-including allegations that a female interrogator pretended to wipe her own menstrual blood on one prisoner-the "reports of Quran desecration seemed shocking but not incredible," adding, "But to Muslims, defacing the Holy Book is especially heinous."

Newsweek also maintained that it was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Quran.

As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then.

But the Newsweek report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics, it said, reverting to Karzai's explanation that his opposition was seeking to exploit the situation.

 

[ciba]

Originally posted by: MoonbeamThe likelihood is high that this is a false retraction and that the facts were originally thoroughly checked.

Just like CBS checked their facts? Just like the NYT knew that all of Blair's stories were real?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

What are their names?

You'd have to ask Isikoff. I didn't talk to him/her/it.
[/quote]

How convienent.

 

[ECUHITMAN]

So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

What are their names?

You'd have to ask Isikoff. I didn't talk to him/her/it.

How convienent.

[/quote]

I'll tell you what, when Robert Novak reveals his source for the Valerie Plame story the Isikoff can be asked for his source.

But I don't remember you complaining about Novak.

The Bush administation made this entire episode possible with their "Extraordinary Rendition" as well as the world-wide broadcast of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo. These previous and current instances of U.S. torture and abuse of Muslims, most of whom were held without charges and released without charges too, created the atmosphere wherein these stories are immediately accepted as fact in the Muslim world.

Bush was warned prior to invading Iraq that he was wasting the post 9/11 good will toward America. Now Bush's illegal invasion and these resulting actions by the U.S. military have proved that warning to be correct.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: TheGameIs21
So when we the US see that the press is so anti administration that they are willing to publish crap that gets people killed and only say "Um.... oops" I hope that there will be criminal charges for the deaths caused by this.

Not so fast:

Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement
Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

If the Newsweek report erred, it was perhaps in saying that the U.S. was slated to acknowledge desecrating the Quran in internal investigations. But reports of desecration are manifold.

One such incident?during which the Koran allegedly was thrown in a pile and stepped on?prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in Mar. 2002, which led to an apology. The New York Times interviewed former detainee Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi May 1, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp.

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans," Times reporters Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt wrote in "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay."

The hunger strike and apology story was also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The people the law forgot," Guardian, Dec. 3, 2003) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, Mar. 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. ?It was a very bad situation for us,? said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. ?We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.? (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guatanamo detainee who was released to British custody in Mar. 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, (Aug. 4, 2004, deposition available here.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", Apr. 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site (which describes itself as a "non-sectarian Islamic human rights website"): http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=6862

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com, available at: http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=1611

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal," May 2, 2005).

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

If this story was fabricated it was fabricated by a Bush administration senior official just as the WMD story was. No difference.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

If this story was fabricated it was fabricated by a Bush administration senior official just as the WMD story was. No difference.

According to the people who wrote a story they are now retracting as false.

ok

 

[ECUHITMAN]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

The media reported that there WERE WMD's and in turn got public support behind the administration. It turns out that both the media and this administration were completely wrong. The only difference is that Newsweek reported that a "senior government official" gave them the needed information for this report, whereas the entire administration was using WMDs all the time.

Were they wrong? Yes. Was anyone held accountable for the lives lost and money spent? Nope.

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

If this story was fabricated it was fabricated by a Bush administration senior official just as the WMD story was. No difference.

According to the people who wrote a story they are now retracting as false.

ok

Did Newsweek print a retraction?

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: TheGameIs21
So when we the US see that the press is so anti administration that they are willing to publish crap that gets people killed and only say "Um.... oops" I hope that there will be criminal charges for the deaths caused by this.

Not so fast:

Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement
Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

If the Newsweek report erred, it was perhaps in saying that the U.S. was slated to acknowledge desecrating the Quran in internal investigations. But reports of desecration are manifold.

One such incident?during which the Koran allegedly was thrown in a pile and stepped on?prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in Mar. 2002, which led to an apology. The New York Times interviewed former detainee Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi May 1, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp.

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans," Times reporters Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt wrote in "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay."

The hunger strike and apology story was also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The people the law forgot," Guardian, Dec. 3, 2003) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, Mar. 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. ?It was a very bad situation for us,? said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. ?We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.? (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guatanamo detainee who was released to British custody in Mar. 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, (Aug. 4, 2004, deposition available here.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", Apr. 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site (which describes itself as a "non-sectarian Islamic human rights website"): http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=6862

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com, available at: http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=1611

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal," May 2, 2005).

Great info, Conjur.

Imagine that. Reports corroborating this story over two years old.

Yet now the U.S. press is reporting ONLY that "Newsweek is apologizing for their erroneous report."

Talk about not checking the facts.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Genx87
According to the people who wrote a story they are now retracting as false.

ok

False? Explain this then:
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

If this story was fabricated it was fabricated by a Bush administration senior official just as the WMD story was. No difference.

According to the people who wrote a story they are now retracting as false.

ok

Did Newsweek print a retraction?

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's May 23 issue, out Sunday.

In an article assessing its coverage, the magazine wrote, "How did Newsweek get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest?"


If you want further proof I suggest picking up the may 23rd edition.

 

[judasmachine]

I don't know exactly which parts were wrong, and how they really came across the story, and so on, however one good thing to come from this extremely politically charged enviornment is that there is some major fact checking going on to keep all sides as fair as they're going to get.

 

[CaptnKirk]

SwiftBoat Vetrans Against Newsweek ?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So all the news media that reported that Iraq (according to the US and other foreign intel) had those infamous WMD's should be held responsible for reporting facts that could not be proven and were not double and triple checked?

The difference is the WMD claims were easily backed up by the administration. The fact the WMD information was incorrect means the media's responsibility was fulfilled. In this case they apparently got bad information from an anon source and didnt do enough fact checking to verify it. There is a standard in which news stories need to be checked. This one failed miserably and now newsweek is retracting the story.

This is interesting as this weekends topic on the roundtable shows was media ethics and the amount of people who have been fired or pushed out because their stories were fabricated in the past 6 weeks.

The media reported that there WERE WMD's and in turn got public support behind the administration. It turns out that both the media and this administration were completely wrong. The only difference is that Newsweek reported that a "senior government official" gave them the needed information for this report, whereas the entire administration was using WMDs all the time.

Were they wrong? Yes. Was anyone held accountable for the lives lost and money spent? Nope.

You arent getting it.

The WMD was confirmed by people in the administration with names, several people in the intelligence communities, and several intelligence agencies around the globe. Thus the media did what they had to do and they are fault free.

The newsweek story was confirmed by an anon source in a super secret location.

Anon sources are one of the worst ways to write a story and pass it off as factual.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: judasmachine
I don't know exactly which parts were wrong, and how they really came across the story, and so on, however one good thing to come from this extremely politically charged enviornment is that there is some major fact checking going on to keep all sides as fair as they're going to get.

Whcih blows my mind these agencies right and left continue to spit out false and unchecked stories. Blogs will destroy a story if it has false information in it.

 

[ECUHITMAN]

So just because you have a name to back up a statement it makes it less wrong or that the media is less responcible for reporting false information?

So if a named source said that they saw the Koran being used the way Newsweek reported, it would be ok?

 

[judasmachine]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: judasmachine
I don't know exactly which parts were wrong, and how they really came across the story, and so on, however one good thing to come from this extremely politically charged enviornment is that there is some major fact checking going on to keep all sides as fair as they're going to get.

Whcih blows my mind these agencies right and left continue to spit out false and unchecked stories. Blogs will destroy a story if it has false information in it.

agreed. the bs is piling up, someone has to break out with the pooper scooper.

 

[BBond]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: BBond

Did Newsweek print a retraction?

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's May 23 issue, out Sunday.

In an article assessing its coverage, the magazine wrote, "How did Newsweek get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest?"


If you want further proof I suggest picking up the may 23rd edition.

Uh, I've read retractions and that ain't no retraction.

They're apologizing for any part of the story that isn't correct but not stating which parts aren't correct. That leaves a door open if they ever grow a pair and report the fact that stories of the desacration of the Qur'an have been reported for years.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: ECUHITMAN
So just because you have a name to back up a statement it makes it less wrong or that the media is less responcible for reporting false information?

So if a named source said that they saw the Koran being used the way Newsweek reported, it would be ok?

If you have a name behind a story then chances are it is the official stance. Using an anon source means you can make anything you want up. Nobody knows who said it and how it was confirmed.

It would help to keep newsweeks credibility in the story. Because we can go to the source and find out where he got his\her information from. Right now it could be mickey mouse as the source and we wouldnt know the difference.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: BBond

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: BBond

Did Newsweek print a retraction?

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's May 23 issue, out Sunday.

In an article assessing its coverage, the magazine wrote, "How did Newsweek get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest?"


If you want further proof I suggest picking up the may 23rd edition.

Uh, I've read retractions and that ain't no retraction.

They're apologizing for any part of the story that isn't correct but not stating which parts aren't correct. That leaves a door open if they ever grow a pair and report the fact that stories of the desacration of the Qur'an have been reported for years.

Read the final article from them. Chances are they will tell you which parts are incorrect and chances are it isnt what you will want to hear. They wouldnt write an article like this if the meat of the story was correct.

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: conjur

Originally posted by: Genx87
According to the people who wrote a story they are now retracting as false.

ok

False? Explain this then:
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

??