When NBC fired Imus last month,  the top brass there seemed to indicate they meant business when it came to punishing people for the negative impact of their words.  Apologies are fine, but there are no second chances when you say something that hurts others.   The NBC corporate line was clear:  Imus is a good man who has done great work for others, but the pain he caused to the players at Rutgers could not be forgiven by allowing him to remain on the air.
May 18, 2005-- The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz calls Newsweek firestorm "biggest blunder in modern media history."
 

So imagine our surprise when we learned today that NBC has hired former Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker, as senior vice president for news, a job that will make him the No. 2 executive in the network’s news division.

Don’t remember the name Mark Whitaker?

Whitaker was in charge at Newsweek in the spring of 2005 when the magazine ignited a firestorm in the Muslim world after publishing an item claiming U.S. forces flushed a Qur'an down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay while interrogating Muslim terror suspects.

When the story reached the Muslim world, riots broke out, from Gaza to Indonesia.  Angry mobs burned down government buildings.  Muslim clerics called for a holy war against the United States.  The violence left at least 15 people dead.

The story turned out to be wrong—the product of some fairly questionable reporting by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff under Whitaker’s leadership.   Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz called it “one of the biggest blunders in modern American media history.”

Whitaker and Newsweek were forced to apologize.  Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman used Imus’ program to explain the apology.

 
May 16, 2005-- Newsweek's Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman apologize on Imus' program for Qur'an story.

When the firestorm faded, Whitaker and the others involved were allowed to keep their jobs and move on.

In the days after Imus stirred a much milder controversy, at least by Mideast standards,  Newsweek was the first publication to announce its reporters and writers would no longer appear on his program.  Newsweek didn’t wait for NBC or CBS to take action, and the magazine didn’t wait for Imus to apologize in person to the players at Rutgers.   A short, one paragraph memo from editor Jon Meacham announced Newsweek would have nothing to do with Imus.

What Imus said to the girls at Rutgers hurt their feelings and cost him his job.  The words Mark Whitaker and Newsweek printed exploded into deadly violence across the Middle East and have made him the no. 2 guy at NBC News.