Newsweek Blames Cricket Player For Rioting

Newsweek: "This guy did it."

A former cricket player turned politician is the latest feeble excuse Newsweek has come up with for their failure to corroborate the Quran-flushing story. Imran Khan, a critic of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, quoted from the Newsweek story at a press conference in Pakistan on May 6.

From The Times of India:

"The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf," the magazine said in its latest issue reviewing last week's turbulent events.

"Brandishing a copy of that week's Newsweek (dated May 9), Khan read a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo prison had placed the Quran on toilet seats and even flushed one.

"This is what the US is doing," the magazine quoted Khan as exclaiming, "desecrating the Koran."

Khan's remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan, it said.

This is a rather unique position for a news outlet to take: blaming a reader for not realizing that the news outlet's story wasn't true. Okay. I haven't seen this much flailing around since Eason Jordan accused American soldiers of "targeting" journalists.