So a story from a single anonymous source sparked anti-American riots across the Middle East leading to at least a dozen deaths. The media regards itself as an important part of the checks and balances of democracy. Wrong - democracy is served by built in nodes of power with explicit and vested interests in promoting their ascendancy. The reach and concentration of media today is an aberration - it wields power, but lacks transparency and is responsible to nobody. Rather than acting to promote media concentration, thereby enhancing the power of the this un-democratic social force, the FCC should act to reduce it. Editors and journalists should drop their pretensions of being a force for change, and adopt a role of investigating and reporting information to the public. The Newsweek story is yet another in the recent long line of media scandals in which shabby information was published primarily on the basis of being damaging to a loathed conservative administration.
Newsweek says erred in Koran desecration report - Yahoo! News

Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
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'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,' Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Koran down the toilet.