Accuracy in reporting is very important. Sources and facts should be carefully checked - if they are not the results can be devastating:

Magazine 'regrets' Qur'an story after 17 die
Last Updated Mon, 16 May 2005 07:07:55 EDT
CBC News

NEW YORK - A news report which led to anti-American riots in which at least 17 people died may have been incorrect, Newsweek magazine says.

• INDEPTH: Guantanamo

The magazine ran a report on May 9 about alleged acts of desecration of Islam's holy book at Guantanamo Bay. On Sunday, however, it said the report was based on a source in the U.S. government whose story is now in doubt.

"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 U.S. magazine's May 23 issue.

The report sparked the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

At least 17 people have been killed in protests over the past week that turned into violent clashes with police.

The May 9 article said American interrogators at the detention camp in Cuba were placing copies of the Qur'an on toilets to rattle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."

• FROM MAY 11, 2005: Troops kill 4 at Qur'an desecration protest

According to the magazine, it checked the story before publication with a Pentagon source.

That person identified an error, which the magazine changed, but said nothing about the flushing incident.

"The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge" about the statements made by the government source, the magazine said.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said no evidence has been found to back allegations that the incident took place.

Similar stories have been published before, Newsweek said.

But it attributed the violence that followed its report to agitators seeking to take advantage of public discontent in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan on Sunday, a group of Islamic scholars and tribal elders said the United States must punish anyone who was found to have abused the Qur'an, or they would call for a holy war.

And in Lebanon, a senior Shia cleric said the reported desecration was a "brutal" form of torture.

"This act is not an individual act carried out by an American soldier," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in a written statement.

"But rather it is part of the American behaviour of intellectual and psychological education in disrespecting Islam and smearing its image in the souls of Americans."