In a New York Times article entitled “Believe It: The Media’s Credibility Headache Gets Worse,” Patrick D. Healy unintentionally illustrates precisely why the media’s credibility is in tatters (emphasis mine):

Almost like clockwork, each new month seems to usher in a new controversy over journalistic competence or integrity - the latest being the retracted May 9 article in Newsweek, about a report that American interrogators flushed a Koran down the toilet, that has been linked by the White House to at least 17 deaths during anti-American protests that followed.

Actually, Mr. Healy, it was the rioters themselves—or, as you put it, “protesters”—who carried signs criticizing the alleged Koran desecration that Newsweek reported. The Muslim rioters conveniently rendered their signs in English, knowing that the establishment press would gladly pick up and broadcast the message to the English-speaking world. So the link wasn’t drawn by the White House, it was explicitly stated up front, from the very beginning, by the rioters.

By blaming the White House, Healy is engaging in a little intellectual sleight-of-hand. The way he reports it, the reader is left to conclude that the there was no connection between the riots and the Newsweek report until the White House suggested it. In other words, according to Healy, the link was nothing more than White House opinion. The only way to reach that conclusion is to completely ignore what the rioters themselves said in their signs. With this logic, Newsweek is cast as a victim of White House spin. This media-as-victim tactic is telling, considering an analogy drawn by Healy earlier in the article:

[...] Johnson & Johnson proved that credibility, not to mention market share, could be regained after scandal - in its case, a series of deaths caused by cyanide-laced [Tylenol] capsules some 20 years ago. Part of the strategy was to portray the company as a victim in its own right.

[...]

Compared with the news media outlets, Tylenol may have had it easy. It would be hard for the media to pitch itself as a innocent victim of its own shortcomings.

It can’t be too hard, apparently, because that’s exactly what Healy does by implying the White House concocted a connection that the rioters themselves claimed quite openly. Maybe asking a Times reporter to look at the photographic evidence is too much. Either way, there’s one assertion Healy has right: “American confidence in the news media is at an all-time low.”