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Last week The Washington Post, jumping on the "defending Newsweek" bandwagon and supporting the magazine's right to publish unsubstantiated reports of Koran abuse in American prisons, provided a laundry list of similar allegations. Most were from prisoners, but one was from former Army interpreter Eric Saar:
Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo Bay who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees at the military prison, said in interviews and in his book that he never saw a Koran flushed in a toilet but that guards routinely ignored prisoners' sensitivities by tossing it on the ground while searching their cells.Unfortunately, the author quickly learned that if you're going to quote a book you might want to read it first. Here's today's correction:
A May 18 article incorrectly stated that former Army translator Erik Saar said in previous media interviews that guards at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, routinely tossed Korans on the ground. Saar has said there were "chronic problems" with the way military guards handled the Koran and failures to follow military procedures for respectfully handling the Muslim holy book when guards inspected cells, but he did not say that guards routinely tossed copies of the book.In the immortal words of Emily Latella, "nevermind". Don't worry though, we're sure the original WaPo claims will continue to be heavily quoted as "definitive". Corrections are notoriously hard to find, and this one's no exception.
I'm at a loss as to why so many news outlets are so eager to get this story so wrong. Couldn't some minimum level of research be done prior to publishing something that's now demonstrably inflammatory? Aren't there some kind of "journalistic standards" for this sort of thing? I've heard that there are, but never having seen them I'll refrain from speculating as to whether they've been violated here.
More on Saar's book, "co-authored" with reporter Viveca Novak here.
Update: The author of this UPI report in Washington Times read the book more slowly and carefully:
In his recent book "Inside the Wire," former Army interpreter Eric Saar noted that the issue of Korans at Camp Delta was so sensitive that only soldiers of the Muslim faith were allowed into cells at the onset of searches to handle them.Even the WaPo's "correction" sounds incredibly biased now. Pathetic.
