CNN Sends Top Exec To Patch Up Differences With Israel

CNSNEWS.com ^ | 6/24/02 | Julie Stahl

[kattracks]

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - CNN's top news executive Eason Jordan beat a hot path to Israel over the weekend following the furor surrounding comments made by CNN founder Ted Turner, who recently equated Israeli military action with terrorism.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian - published on the day that a suicide attacker bombed a Jerusalem bus, killing 19 people - Turner said he would "make the case that both sides are involved in terrorism."

Although Turner later softened his statements, the incident appeared to be the straw that broke the camel's back for Israelis, who have long complained that CNN's reporting was biased against Israel and favored the Palestinians.

At least one satellite television company added Fox News to its lineup last week. Fox News, CNN's competitor, is considered by many Israelis to be more balanced.

CNN distanced itself from Turner's comments and sent Jordan here to meet with Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin, who last week called CNN's coverage "evil, biased and unbalanced."

Rivlin's spokeswoman, Anat Friedman, said on Monday that the meeting had been "productive."

Rivlin protested and shared examples of what Israel considers to be CNN's biased coverage, Friedman said. Rivlin told Jordan that Israel has been fighting a war for its existence for the last year and a half.

Friedman quoted Rivlin as telling Jordan, "It's very hard to fight terror when CNN only shows one side and calls the terrorists that [murder] children 'freedom fighters' or 'gunmen.'"

According to Friedman, Jordan said his network is trying to do its best, and he dismissed suggestions that CNN's coverage is not objective. He also said CNN would try to be more sensitive to the victims of terror.

Friedman said Israel hoped that from now on CNN would be "more objective and more sensitive."

While here, Jordan has also given several interviews to the Israeli press. In an interview with Israel television Channel 2 on Sunday, he admitted that CNN had made mistakes but said the network is always striving to do better.

He also said he had met with Palestinian officials who accused CNN of being pro-Israel and being a mouthpiece for the Jewish state.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, published on Monday, Jordan said his network would no longer give airtime to the families of suicide bombers.

"We want to make sure there is no suggestion of moral equivalence between victims and perpetrators [of terrorism]," he was quoted as saying.

The policy change follows a report in which CNN aired less than a minute of an interview with a wounded woman who lost her mother and baby in a terror attack and then spoke for several minutes about the troubles of the suicide bomber's mother.

Following last week's spate of terror, in which Jerusalem was particularly hard-hit, CNN decided to do a five-part series with Wolf Blitzer called "The Victims of Terror."

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[galt-jw]

if the jews bite on this one, they are truly dumb and deserve what they get. btw, why has it taken twenty plus years of horrific terrorist attacks by a group who wants to exterminate your race to get the bright idea:

hey, lets fence them off..they arent serious, and neither is the US in regard to security....guard our borders? nah.

[BIGZ]

CNN missed the boat. CNN should have sent Alec Baldwin and he could have stayed there.

I would be most happy to donate a ticket, one-way of course.