http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/03/17/media/index3.html

Violence has clearly been decreasing in the Western world for the last 500 years; as far as we can tell from uneven record-keeping, the murder rate in medieval Europe was several times higher than it is today, even in relatively violent societies like the U.S. While the 20th century has seen some spikes in violent crime -- correlating less to the arrival of television than to the proportion of young men in the population -- the downward trend since about 1980 has reinforced the general tendency. As Rhodes puts it, "We live in one of the least violent eras in peacetime human history."

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2000/06/violent_media.html

Weighing in on Newsweek

There are many international sources for the Quran being defiled at Guantanamo and denials by the U.S. military mean little; our government holds prisoners in violation of international law and denies them access to independent counsel or human rights groups. Their dismissal of such charges cannot be believed, as they have created an atmosphere of unrestrained torture.

(Washington Post, 3/26/03; London Guardian, 12/3/03; Daily Mirror, 3/12/04; Center for Constitutional Rights, 8/4/04; La Gazette du Maroc, 4/12/05; New York Times, 5/1/05; BBC, 5/2/05; cites compiled by Antiwar.com, 5/16/05).

What we're seeing is the right wing media creating a controversy where none exists.
What they want us to believe is that anonymous sources are fine, as long as they are promoting rather than challenging official government policy. It's all right for your reporting to be completely wrong, as long as your errors are in the service of power.

How can Newsweek be blamed for violence in Iraq when the US has conducted an illegal war there? How minuscule the Newsweek article is in relation to the egregious damage the US has intentionally performed.

The corrupt economic policies of the neo-con Republicans have resulted in a diminished American dream, a future of McJobs for our children and seniors alike.

"One cannot but wonder at this constantly
recurring phrase 'getting something for nothing,'
as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition
of disturbers of society. Except for our animal
outfit, practically all that we have is handed to
us gratis. Can the most complacent reactionary
flatter himself that he invented the art of writing
or the printing press, or discovered his religious,
economic and moral convictions, or any of the
devices which supply him with meat and raiment
or any of the sources of such pleasures as he may
derive from literature or the fine arts? In short,
civilization is little else than getting something for
nothing."
--James Harvey Robinson,
historian, (1863-1936)