Newsweek has moved from an apology for any errors to a full-blown retraction.

An excerpt from the CTV.ca story:

Hours after the White House called its reluctance "puzzling," Newsweek magazine is retracting a controversial report that sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan.

On Monday, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan was critical of the magazine for not retracting a story that claimed the Qur'an was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"It's puzzling. While Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refuse to retract the story,'' McClellan told reporters. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met. In this instance it was not."

Here's some excerpts from the NYT story:

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantánamo Bay," Newsweek's editor, Mark Whitaker, said in a one-sentence statement issued by the magazine late this afternoon.

Mr. Whitaker's statement went further than the apology he issued on Sunday, in which he expressed doubts about information that had been provided by a "senior government official" whom the magazine did not identify, as well as regrets over the loss of life linked to the report.

Throughout the day today, the White House, the State Department and other critics of the Newsweek report, a short article in the May 9 issue, assailed the magazine for not issuing a retraction despite acknowledging that the official had recently expressed doubt about his own knowledge of the accusation against the guards.

"It's appalling, really, that an article that was unfounded to begin with has caused so much harm, including loss of life," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said at a briefing in Washington.

"One would expect, as the facts come out of how this story was written - one would, in fact, expect more than the kind of correction we've seen so far," he said. "But I think it's very clear to us nonetheless that the effects around the world have been very bad."

I wonder whether the administration identified Newsweek's source and leaned on him/her to weaken their commitment to the story and leave Newsweek hanging out to dry.

But that's where some documentary evidence would be crucially important to the journalist and their news organization. When you're just going on one source's word, you're in shit if they back off on you.