Partisan Bloggers Spin Newsweek Story

The Newsweek imbroglio has spawned an immense blogstorm. The opinions out there are widely varied although Newsweek is universally disparaged—sometimes for being cowards, sometimes for being traitors, most often for being plain lousy journalists.

But what’s most fascinating about the reaction is watching certain partisan bloggers spin the story to fit inside their very specific worldviews.

At the staunchly conservative, unfailingly partisan Power Line, John Hinderaker responds to another blogger who called the event, “the press’s Abu Ghraib.”:

I really think that calling Newsweek's blunder "the press's Abu Ghraib" is unfair to the low-lifes who carried out the Abu Ghraib abuses. After all, they didn't even hurt anyone, let alone kill them. And the people they abused were almost certainly terrorists. One can't say the same for the people who were murdered in the riots that foreseeably followed Newsweek's story.

Not only does Hinderaker manage to slip in a disgusting defense for Abu Ghraib, but he would have us believe that by wrongly reporting as fact the rumor of Quran desecration, Newsweek has committed a worse offense than physical torture. The thinking being: people died because of riots that broke out after the report, therefore the reporters are to blame. Odd how Hinderaker who is usually so quick to say people must be held accountable for their own actions is now arguing that the rioters were just poor folk incited to violence by the liberally biased stupidity of Newsweek. Fact is, while the magazine is culpable for supplying our enemies with unwarranted propaganda, they can’t be directly blamed for the deaths caused by rioters. The lion’s share of the blame for those deaths rests squarely on the rioters themselves.

Of course, we won’t find any saner voices over at the hard-line liberal, unabashedly partisan Daily Kos, where Susan Hu has written:

I see this incident this way: Newsweek has good sources for its allegations, but has backed off because it finds itself in a dicey, ill-founded public relations nightmare.

Newsweek has foresaken journalism to save what it perceives as its own hide.

By “good sources” Hu is referring to the several former Guantanamo prisoners who have alleged that soldiers desecrated the Quran. Hu is actually more inclined to believe enemy combatants than she is willing to believe her own government. A little distrust of government is a good thing, but what twisted thought process leads one to instinctively put more trust in the enemy? Those at Kos have fallen so deep into Bush-hate that they are more-than-eager to believe every slander against our military—even if it means actively taking the enemy’s side.

What Daily Kos and Power Line demonstrate is how twisted the logic of partisan ideologues has become. One views all those who oppose American action as evil while the other views all those who support American action as evil. There is no room for nuance and certainly no room for debate.

Fortunately, the blogosphere is huge and, if you search, there are plenty voices of reason. (There’s even a list just over there on the right of the screen).