stenography

There was a blow up of sorts today about the NYTimes public editor asking whether the Times should correct inaccurate facts (known politely as falsehoods) asserted by interviewees in their articles. Of course, they already do. They just don't do it for the American powerful.

Hajji Ahmad Fareed, a former member of Parliament, said the images confirmed to him that America was against Islam. The Americans "will never be friends with us and never bring peace," he said. Americans have urinated "on our holy Koran," he said, and have now done so "on the bodies of our Muslims." Mr. Fareed was referring to an erroneous report in Newsweek in 2005 that American soldiers at the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had thrown a Koran into a toilet. The report prompted protests and riots in many parts of the Muslim world. The worst was in Afghanistan, where at least 17 people were killed.

 This point, I see, has been made, better, and time-lier, by Greenwald.