MSM and According Terrorist Moral Superiority

This one is from Wretchard at the Belmont Club. The blog starts with this:

Glenn Reynolds notes that the New York Times coverage of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan may not really be about prisoner abuse or even Afghanistan, but about maintaining the prestige of Newsweek. He calls it "circling the wagons", the idea being to teach press critics an object lesson in how expensive it is to humiliate the mass media by catching them at sloppy reporting by flooding the zone with stories similar to the one which was discredited . That may or may not be the case, but it is nearly undeniable that the effect of the media's coverage of American misdeeds has been to make the slightest infraction against enemy combatants ruinously expensive. Not only the treatment of the enemy combatants themselves, but their articles of religious worship have become the subject of such scrutiny that Korans must handled with actual gloves in a ceremonial fashion, a fact that must be triumph for the jihadi cause in and of itself. While nothing is wrong with ensuring the proper treatment of enemy prisoners, the implicit moral superiority that has been accorded America's enemy and his effects recalls Rudyard Kipling's The Grave of the Hundred Dead.

This made me stop for a moment. I hadn't thought to this depth on the whole topic. Not only has the Newsweek issue caused deaths and mayhem, but the implications that the Koran is such a sacred thing, and not just a book, gives the Islamofascists an implied moral superiority. Though this same press rails against any legislation protecting the American flag or any symbols of Christian faiths. Doesn't anyone else find this suspicious? It strikes me as sensationalizing the issue in a seriously warped context.

I also found the idea of the MSM lashing out at the critics an interesting point. The defense of sloppy reporting by pointing to other similar stories on desecration and/or abuse is an important point. Again the press stirs up the problem and blows it out of proportion. And by doing so, they appear to be defending poor practices of their own. Imagine if any other profession tried this. Police beat up an innocent unarmed person and then defend themselves by saying other beatings of unarmed people had been known to have proved the right thing to do. You don't believe there wouldn't be an investigation and related suspensions/firings or criminal charges?

This all really strikes me as though the press is defending their unprofessional behavior and then telling bloggers/critics that they shouldn't criticize the professionals.