Here at the Daily, our twice-a-week summer publishing schedule sometimes gives us the benefit of hindsight in our reporting and commentary. Such is the case with the recent Newsweek imbroglio, in which an unconfirmed story about our military’s mistreatment of the Quran was used by Pakistani and Afghan groups to foment unrest, leading to riots that left 16 dead.

Following in the tradition of Jason Blair, Jack Kelly, Stephen Glass and Dan Rather, the media rushed to crucify Newsweek’s ethics. White House spokesman Scott McClellan fanned the flames of the controversy, blaming the deaths on the magazine’s failure and suggesting it should provide the world with a positive view of America, rather than — you know — the truth.

McClellan and the White House certainly are bold to attack someone for faulty reporting leading to tragedy, given their reliance on faulty intelligence as the primary justification for our attack on Iraq, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Larry DiRita, the spokesman for the Pentagon, has been even worse. In comments bordering on dishonest, DiRita said they would investigate serious claims of Quran mistreatment, and that “we’ve not seen specific, credible allegations.” Ten days later, the Washington Post reported that investigations have actually been conducted, and in several cases confirmed the mishandling as likely intentional.

It seems clear that if anyone bears responsibility for the recent unrest beyond its participants, it would be the military. Newsweek’s reporting would not have had the power it did without the long and varied list of detainee allegations, the many other reports of Quran desecration, and the photographic proof of abuse in Abu Ghraib.

This doesn’t excuse the Newsweek report and the shoddy fact-checking. An apparently reliable anonymous official was the source of the information. The story was then run by two Pentagon officials. One declined to comment, and the other challenged the accuracy of parts of the story, but not the part that caused all the commotion.

Newsweek has handled the controversy in an upright manner. A quick apology and retraction followed news that the source was backing away from the story, while editor Mark Whitaker stuck by his reporters.

The error and controversy do bring up one important problem with modern political reporting — the over-reliance on anonymous sources. While anonymous sources are an important tool for the media in their role as government watchdog, they aren’t needed in every single story. There is no need to protect the identity of someone simply for describing the content of a soon-to-be released report. One definite lesson for the media to learn from all this is that we need to seriously think about our policies on anonymous sourcing.