Honesty, truth take a beating in media

Newsweek's retraction of a story that it printed about the Quran being flushed down a toilet will do little to correct the damage that it has done.

With freedom comes responsibility, and this includes freedom of the press. Newsweek will retract the story even if it knows that it is true - not because of the damage it has done to the United States, but because of the number of subscribers it stands to lose.

As a former U.S. Army interrogator, I believe the story probably is true. The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been there more than three years - there is no hope of getting anything from them, yet the Army and other service branches will expect the impossible from its inexperienced and young interrogators, so out of desperation they will try just about anything. If a prisoner is not broken within a few days of capture, he/she probably will not be broken.

Newsweek is being condemned by the White House and the American people for reporting a story that may not be true. Dan Rather was forced to resign for not fully checking out a story about the president's National Guard service. The American people demanded it.

The White House and Bush order an invasion of a country; costs America hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives based on unfounded and later proven untrue allegations; and he is re-elected. What a warped value system America is practicing. It holds its entertainment (the media) to higher standards than it does its president.

John M. Orr, Evans