WSJ piece, Apr 03
CNN's Access of Evil
The network of record covered Saddam's repression with propaganda.
BY FRANKLIN FOER
Monday, April 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime--murders, tortures, assassination plots--that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."
Of course, Mr. Jordan may feel he deserves a pinch of credit for coming clean like this. But this admission shouldn't get him any ethical journalism trophies. For a long time, CNN denied that its coverage skimped on truth. While I researched a story on CNN's Iraq coverage for the New Republic last October, Mr. Jordan told me flatly that his network gave "a full picture of the regime." In our conversation, he challenged me to find instances of CNN neglecting stories about Saddam's horrors. If only I'd had his Times op-ed!
Would that this were an outbreak of honesty, however belated. But it isn't. If it were, Mr. Jordan wouldn't be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry--and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships. For CNN, the highest prize is "access," to score live camera feeds from a story's epicenter. Dictatorships understand this hunger, and also that it provides blackmail opportunities. In exchange for CNN bureaus, dictatorships require adherence to their own rules of reportage. They create conditions where CNN--and other U.S. media--can do little more than toe the regime's line.
snipped
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003336
Thank you, Vn_Survivor_67-68; for serving our country, and serving us here. :)
So, in all those years, Eason did not tell the true facts about Saddam lest the "innocent" be compromised and murdered.
Al Jazeera continually spread anti-US, anti-US/Coalition progaganda on air while the US was liberating the "innocents" (Eason's word used here) from a brutal regime and its allies... AJ also 'photojournaled" US Troops activities of which terrorists were observing. And photojournaled/broadcast the atrocities of terrorist beheadings of innocents. If I follow all this correctly, applying the same logic of Eason to the logic of the Davos AJ journalist... AJ Journalists were afraid to NOT broadcast the anti-US stuff because then they'd lose their inside status with the Terrorists.