Posted on 10/14/2003 10:49:52 AM PDT by Osage Orange
CNN anchor shares thoughts on 9/11
2003-10-14
By Mick Hinton
The Oklahoman
NORMAN -- National news anchor Aaron Brown said Monday his thoughts after 9/11 were not unlike those of hundreds of Oklahomans after the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City. "Critics of the media say we are talking about 'their country.' It is our country. I lost friends in 9/11; my child's life was changed by 9/11," said Brown, CNN night news anchor.
Brown, who spoke Monday night at the University of Oklahoma, was the keynote speaker for a two-day conference on "The Media, the Military and the Iraq War," sponsored by the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication and The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
"If you look at institutions, whether it is the government or us (the media), it has been a little tricky to navigate the post-9/ 11 world," he said. "For example, whatever you think of the Patriot Act, it is inadequately debated and inadequately covered."
The mood of the people has been that "nobody wanted to deal with these particularly difficult questions of balance between individual liberty and national security in the wake of the death of 3,000 of our countrymen and an attack on our country."
Brown said there should be public discussion about the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, whose case now has been transferred from a civilian court to a military court, where defendants have fewer rights.
Moussaoui is the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"We have been timid in our coverage, not terrible, but not as good as we ought to be," he said.
Brown said he thinks the coverage of the war itself has been done "extraordinarily well," but others such as the Fox News network bring a conservative slant to the news.
"I'm in the news-gathering business. We have 150 correspondents across the world. Fox is in the talk-about-the-news business. They have a conservative New York slant," he said.
"There's not one person who could say whether I support the war or not. My job is to see that the underlying issues are brought to public discussion."
Brown said it is a better world now that Saddam Hussein is gone.
"It is a better world that these children are not reading textbooks that are dreadfully politicized."
He said the mood of the public has not been supportive of covering the grim facts of the Iraqi war.
"The fact is that roughly four or five Americans are killed every week," which has been reported, he said, "but literally thousands have been wounded and that has gone unreported."
Last week, CNN followed the lives of some of the wounded.
"A lot of people wrote that by emphasizing this, you are turning the people off of war," he said.
That he can say this without any sense of irony really says a great deal about Mr. Brown's point of view.
Whenever I see him on TV I think of a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding semi.
Brown said he thinks the coverage of the war itself has been done "extraordinarily well," but others such as the Fox News network bring a conservative slant to the news.
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As always with these people...the funny thing...or the sad thing is...they don't even realize their bias. Either that, or they know EXACTLY what they are doing. I hope it's the former...in Brown's personal case. But with CNN as a whole..I know it's the latter.
"I'm in the news-gathering business. We have 150 correspondents across the world. Fox is in the talk-about-the-news business. They have a conservative New York slant," he said.
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LOL!! What's a "conservative New York slant"? For a reporter not to know that CNN is called the mouth-piece for the DNC is...ummm, pretty bad reporting. LOL!!
"There's not one person who could say whether I support the war or not. My job is to see that the underlying issues are brought to public discussion."
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Well....Aaron I'm one person. I don't think you really support the war. Kind of odd, in my mind that you don't think anyone could say that. Not very thoughtful, or intuitive.
"It is a better world that these children are not reading textbooks that are dreadfully politicized."
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I guess it's been awhile since Aaron has opened an American text book. Now there's a story, Aaron..!!!
He said the mood of the public has not been supportive of covering the grim facts of the Iraqi war.
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No, it's the continual harping on the "grim facts". War is hell, as they say. What I'm not "supportive" of ( I don't watch CNN anyway..) is how CNN doesn't "report" the good things...that are happening in Iraq because of our being there.
FWIW-
"How did Brown ever get to be an anchor? THe guy is half dead."
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See posts 4,5, and 6. :)
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