How's This For An Apology?

Linda Foley, the top journalist in America (if being president of the Newspaper Guild allows such a characterization) has finally addressed the uproar that occurred when she repeated the Eason Jordan-ism that US forces were deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq. Here's what she said then:

"Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq."

And here's her "apology," delivered after refering to criticism of her comments as "a right-wing screed":

"If I made a mistake, it was in trying to cover the issues surrounding safety for journalists in Iraq in an off-the-cuff way. I regret that my in-artful phraseology, and the storm it incited on the right, may detract from a critically important issue for journalists, especially those who cover war.

"So at the risk of repeating what we’ve reported for months in The Guild Reporter and elsewhere, here’s a better way of saying what I was trying to communicate in St. Louis: An unacceptable number of journalists are being killed in Iraq, most of them by insurgents, many of them brutally. Fourteen of those deaths, involving U.S. forces, have been inadequately explained or investigated by the U.S. military. One, the April 8, 2003, bombing of the Al-Jazeera studios in Baghdad, never has been explained at all. As a result, many journalists around the world wonder if the U.S. military is targeting journalists.

"Since April 2003, the Guild, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Reuters and others repeatedly have called upon the Pentagon to conduct independent investigations of these incidences. So far we have received only redacted, whitewashed explanations which often raise more questions than they answer.

Wow. That's quite an artful apology, a great example of apologizing by repeating the allegations. Michelle Malkin headlined her item on this "Durbinizer of the day: Linda Foley." She's got that right.

See also:
Slow-Learning Journalists
No Charges of Targeting US Journalists