There wouldn't be a story if we didn't hand it to them. No one invented Abu Ghraib. Dan Rather didn't dream it up. It happened, because the system broke down, and that section of the Army failed.
The news outlets are not to blame for that.
Blaming the media is disingenous. The Army needs to maintain discipline regardless of whether or not anyone is watching.
The media ran Abu Ghraib as a headliner on the front page for almost a solid month. The pictures were endlessly thrown in front of everybody's face the world round. The primary motivation was to try and pin this one on Bush, but the effect was to blow this way out of proportion. Sy Hersch promised pictures of torture and rape by US soldiers. They never materialized, but he never retracted.
Yes, the media was handed a story, but they turned it into a circus, and one which hurt America and endangered Americans. How you can hold them blameless in this matter is beyond my understanding.
Even today, the 'media' drags up Abu Ghraib at the drop of a hat. Anytime the terrorists commit an atrocity, you will find some antiwar nitwit remind us of Abu Ghraib and implying it is all our fault. There have been multiple trial balloons in the past month over Abu Ghraib, trying to get it on the front page again. This story has legs for one reason -- the antiwar left wants to discredit the Iraq War. To blame that all on Graner, dispicable though he may be, is shortsighted and lack basic fairness.