WASHINGTON — Newsweek magazine acknowledged Sunday that there were errors in a story reporting that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran while attempting to extract intelligence from Muslim prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The report led to a series of violent anti-American protests and at least 14 deaths in Afghanistan.
In its issue set to hit U.S. newsstands today, Newsweek said its source for the story backed away from an assertion that investigators had concluded that military personnel had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The finding was supposedly included in an upcoming report.
Newsweek apologized and expressed regret about the violence that followed the story. But the magazine defended its reporting and said it was continuing to investigate allegations that U.S. personnel had desecrated the Muslim holy book.
"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," Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, wrote in a separate note in today's issue.
The admission is likely to focus further scrutiny on the American press, already suffering from revelations that reporters for major publications fabricated material, lifted quotations or used questionable material from unidentified sources.
In an interview, Whitaker said the magazine had gone to unusual lengths to ensure the accuracy of the original article, including showing a prepublication draft to a U.S. official, who chose to neither confirm nor deny the essence of the story. He added that Newsweek didn't plan to discipline anyone as a consequence of the episode.
But the disclosure triggered a strong rebuke from the Bush administration, which has been dealing with the fallout since the magazine's May 9 report.
"My reaction and I think our reaction is that Newsweek reported something that was factually inaccurate on several points. It's demonstrably wrong, and Newsweek has acknowledged that. But they have not retracted it, and have tried instead to water it down," said Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita.
"They printed a story based on an erroneous source or sources that was demonstrably false and that resulted in riots in which people were killed. I don't know how else to parse it," DiRita said.
