Monday, May 23, 2005

More Meaningless Maneuvers From Newsweek

NEW YORK (AP) -- Newsweek has announced plans to limit the magazine's use of anonymous sources following a scandal in which one of its stories was blamed for deadly protests in Afghanistan.

In a letter to readers appearing in Monday's edition, Newsweek Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Richard Smith apologized for the original report and said the magazine will raise standards for unnamed sources.

Two of the magazine's top editors will be assigned sole responsibility for approving the use of such sources, and the magazine will stop using the phrase "sources said" to attribute information in stories, Smith said. "We got an important story wrong, and honor requires us to admit our mistake and redouble our efforts to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again," he wrote.

I feel a whole lot better now. As if Newsweek understood the concept of honor. You have to believe in moral absolutes for words like that to mean anything and I'm sure Smith, Isikov and cronies have a definition of honor that is capable of morphing as their needs demand; much as their standards of verification.

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