Retired New York Times reporter David Binder has charged the New York Times and Newsday with "journalistic crimes" for their reporting of the 1990s Balkan Wars. Writing in a forward to Peter Brock's new book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia, Binder states that the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both publications "should, in all fairness and honesty, be revoked." Binder specifically criticizes the Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman for writing accounts of supposed atrocities committed during the conflict in Bosnia that made use of questionable sources. For example, Burns' Pulitzer entry involved a seven—hour interview with Borislav Herak, a Bosnian Serb, who confessed to dozens of murders and multiple rapes. The problem is that three years after the story was published, the Times admitted that Herak was "slightly retarded" and that he had retracted his confession and claimed that he had been beaten by...(Read Full Post)