Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]
The New York Times ^ | 04/11/03 | EASON JORDAN

Posted on 04/10/2003 9:16:06 PM PDT by Pokey78

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 1,101-1,1201,121-1,1401,141-1,160 ... 1,561 next last
To: Pokey78
The Clinton News Network can tell lies about the US military using poison gas against the vietcong, because they know they don't have to pay the price of such evil deeds in America. But they woun't tell the truth about saddam, because they know they will lose money or worse. What weasels and jackals these cnn people are!
1,121 posted on 04/11/2003 2:53:55 PM PDT by desertcry
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Timesink
RE: CBC "I have yet to find any news organization more biased."

You're being unfair and just not looking!

Try North Korea and Cuba, Canada-basher! The CBC's less biased than them...well, usually.

LOL!
1,122 posted on 04/11/2003 2:55:35 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Help me decide: Is the Left morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, or vice versa?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1108 | View Replies]

To: Lucas1
"GOD BLESS THE USA"

Indeed.
1,123 posted on 04/11/2003 2:57:32 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Help me decide: Is the Left morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, or vice versa?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1095 | View Replies]

To: headsonpikes
Brit Hume's show is starting and he listed the topics that will be discussed.

And this is one of them...
1,124 posted on 04/11/2003 3:01:58 PM PDT by cyncooper (thousands of cheering Iraqis yelled, "America, America, America," and "Bush, Bush, Bush.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1123 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Here is a pundit's response (James K. Glassman). The link is http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-041103H

Sins of Omission
By James K. Glassman 04/11/2003


TCS

I was shocked and disgusted by an op-ed piece I read today in the New York Times. No, it wasn't by Paul Krugman. It was far more serious: Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, revealing what the headline called "The News We Kept to Ourselves."

The news concerned the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime. For example:


"One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday [Saddam's son] once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss."

And these were mild cases. In 13 trips to Baghdad, Jordan heard stories of electroshock torture, beatings and brutal murders. Almost certainly, other journalists, editors and news directors heard them, too. So why weren't these atrocities reported?

"Doing so," wrote Jordan, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

That explanation just doesn't wash.

Clearly, there were ways to protect the identities of individual victims of the regime's brutality. And, clearly, by reporting the stories, CNN might finally have aroused the outrage of the world, which in turn would have brought Saddam's end closer - either through united, global pressure or through earlier military action.

It appears there is another, more troubling, reason Jordan decided not to report these hideous crimes until the regime was safely out of the way: CNN didn't want to lose its on-the-ground access to a big story.

Anyone who read Franklin Foer's excellent piece last October in The New Republic, would not have been shocked at Jordan's op-ed today. Foer uncovered Saddam's success at manipulating the U.S. media, especially CNN.

"Like their Soviet-bloc predecessors," he wrote, "the Iraqis have become masters of the Orwellian pantomime - the state-orchestrated anti-American rally, the state-led tours of alleged chemical weapons sites that turn out to be baby milk factories - that promotes their distorted reality. And the Iraqi regime has found an audience for these displays in an unlikely place: the U.S. media. It's not because American reporters have an ideological sympathy for Saddam Hussein; broadcasting his propaganda is simply the only way they can continue to work in Iraq."

As for CNN: Foer wrote six months ago that "nobody has schmoozed the [information] ministry harder than the head of CNN's News Group, Eason Jordan, who has traveled to Baghdad twelve times since the Gulf war. In part these trips…consist of network execs promising they will cover its propaganda."

The alternative is no access at all, writes Foer. Among the reporters banned by the regime at the time he wrote the article were Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour of CNN and Barbara Crossette of the New York Times. Crossette, now retired, had the temerity to file pieces in 1998 "belying Iraqi stories about the horrors of U.N. sanctions."

By contrast, Foer highlights Jane Arraf, CNN's Iraq correspondent for the past four years, "the dean of Western reporters" in the country. I had not read Foer's piece until today, but it goes a long way toward explaining why Arraf appeared, at least to me, to have leaned farthest to the Iraqi side of all U.S. journalists.

Foer wrote three months ago that "nobody better exemplifies [the] go-along-to-get-along reporting strategy…than Arraf. In a segment last month, answering viewer phone calls, Arraf rebutted the charge that Saddam's vanity construction projects have diverted money that could have been used to feed his starving people. Sanctions, she said, have 'tied his hands in some respects.' Later in the same segment, repeating Saddam's constant refrain, she told viewers, 'If there's been anything that's been essentially agreed over the last decade, it's been that the sanctions that are in place by the U.N. and U.S. haven't been working.'"

Foer's piece caused a small stir in journalistic circles, and shortly after it appeared, Bob Garfield interviewed Jordan on WNYC, a New York public-radio station. Garfield asked Jordan his response to the "charges that the Western press is appeasing the Iraqi regime in order to maintain its visas."

Jordan replied that Foer "doesn't have a clear understanding of the realities on the ground because CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it's prepared to be forthright."

What if there is another war? Garfield asked. "Are there decisions you'll make on the margins to be as certain as you possibly can that you will have a presence there?"

Jordan said that he was prepared to deal with a certain amount of censorship, but "we are not going to make journalistic compromises…. We want to be there…and operate as a responsible news organization."

And now, we learn from Jordan's own hand, that he indeed made compromises - severe compromises.

On his 13 trips, Iraqi officials "confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed." Wasn't that news?

He learned that Kurdish officials had thwarted a plan for an armed attack by Iraqis on CNN's headquarters in the northern part of the country. Wasn't that news?

He talked to Iraqis who "whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways." He discovered that "secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails)." Wasn't that news?

Perhaps Jordan and other journalists who suppressed the truth can take comfort that organizations like Human Rights Watch have reported tales of torture. And Jordan ends his Times piece with the story, previously reported, of a brave Kuwaiti woman named Asrar Qabandi, who was captured by Iraqi police just before the U.S. invasion 12 years ago. She was beaten daily for two months, with her father forced to watch. Then, "they smashed her skull and tore her body part limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home."

Yes, atrocities were reported. But not enough so as to have an effect on world opinion.

Those of us who did not live through the Nazi Holocaust find it hard to understand why so many who knew what was happening stayed silent for so long. They had many reasons.

In the case of Saddam - who tried his best to emulate Hitler and might have succeeded if a coalition of Americans, Brits, Australians and Poles had not put an end to his regime - some of the atrocities did come to light. But, again, not as many as were known.

The world most definitely was not outraged during the United Nations debates earlier this year. How would the public in France and Germany - people who certainly know the meaning of crimes against humanity - have reacted if CNN had reported courageously and completely the episodes that Jordan knew had occurred?

And so what if CNN had been thrown out of Iraq?

As Foer wrote, "There are alternatives to mindlessly reciting Baghdad's spin. Instead of desperately trying to keep their Baghdad offices open, the networks could scour Kurdistan and Jordan, where there are many recently arrived Iraqis who can talk freely. 'Amman is the place to find out what's really going on in Iraq,' says ex-CIA officer Robert Baer."

Foer also cites "Uncle Saddam," a documentary by Joel Soler, a sort of freedom-loving version of Michael Moore, director of "Roger and Me." Soler ingratiated himself with the Iraqi regime's inner circle and was allowed remarkable inside glimpses. The film, writes Foer, "shows Saddam to be a lunatic, devoid of morality or humanity." It includes a scene of Saddam's unique style of fishing: throwing grenades into a pond and sending aides to retrieve the kill. Soler didn't need a long-term relationship with Saddam.

But Jordan felt that CNN did. "There's an expectation that if anybody is in Iraq, it will be CNN," he told Foer.

That led Foer to conclude, "His answer reveals the fundamental attitude of most Western media: Access to Baghdad is an end in itself, regardless of the…moral caliber of the journalism such access produces."

The irony, of course, is that CNN did get kicked out Baghdad after the war began, but nevertheless acquitted itself well, using the resources of other media and reporting from surrounding nations. Perhaps if the network had been willing to lose access long before, a nation would have been liberated earlier and many, many lives would have been saved.
1,125 posted on 04/11/2003 3:06:49 PM PDT by Piranha
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cyncooper
Thanks for the reminder about Brit Hume's show -- didn't want to miss this one tonight. Rush was on fire about this today!

Knew CNN was bad but this even boggles my mind. Anyone associated with this coverup by CNN should be fired. They knew all along this was a just war and yet they have acted like we were wrong to go after Saddam and his regime.

Something needs to be done to CNN -- wish I knew what!
1,126 posted on 04/11/2003 3:07:20 PM PDT by PhiKapMom (Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1124 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78

I proudly display my "CNN LIES" bumper Sticker on my car. I got the sticker here at Free Republic from Yahoodi, a poster (Eli?) giving them away free. They came in an envelope from Israel and I immediately put one on my car and gave the extras to friends.

Over the past few months I've had a few challenges and questions about it. Today, I had honks and thumbs up! I am prouder of my "CNN LIES" bumper Sticker today than ever. Unfortunately, the yahoodi site is broke from giving them away free and shipping them to America. They need a sponser.

1,127 posted on 04/11/2003 3:09:02 PM PDT by Drumbo ("Of course I have an attitude, I spent my life beating things for a living" - Drumbo Thunder)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MeeknMing; All
Just received the following from Media Research Center:

1) Rich Noyes, Director of Media Analysis for the MRC, is
scheduled to appear tonight on MSNBC at 10:15pm EDT (9:15pm CDT,
8:15 MDT, 7:15 PDT) on the MSNBC hour hosted by Joe Scarborough.
Topic: CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan's confession about
CNN covering up information they had about Saddam Hussein's
atrocities and thuggery.
1,128 posted on 04/11/2003 3:09:25 PM PDT by PhiKapMom (Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1126 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Liberalism has degenerated to the point that its devotees would willfully make themselves eunuchs to report from the tyrant's palace.
1,129 posted on 04/11/2003 3:10:23 PM PDT by houstonian (The Liberal and his conceit--a vicious cycle.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: texasbluebell
Hugh Hewitt is steamed about CNN and is going to be discussing it with Howard Kurtz of the WA POST in his second hour.
1,130 posted on 04/11/2003 3:10:42 PM PDT by GOPrincess
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1098 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Anything for a "story"....OR a buck!

SHAME!
1,131 posted on 04/11/2003 3:12:06 PM PDT by Teetop (democrats....... socialist.........whats the difference?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Roughneck
QUOTE "I have not had time to read everything.

Anyone talked "boycott CNN" and their subsidiaries (sp)yet?

I think they should at least have to answer to the USA for aiding and abetting no matter what their pitiful excuses are.

I could just vomit."

repeat this 100 times....


GET THE WORD OUT PEOPLE
1,132 posted on 04/11/2003 3:14:09 PM PDT by Lucas1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1117 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Why is CNN bringing this out now>

Is there more bad news and they are attempting to short circuit more severe scrutiny?

We need to know more, much more, about the relationship between CNN and the Saddam regime

1,133 posted on 04/11/2003 3:16:58 PM PDT by CharacterCounts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Maurice Tift
Makes you wonder what else CNN is hiding - does this guy sound like he's telling the whole truth now, or does he have other little nasty secrets he's keeping to himself?
1,134 posted on 04/11/2003 3:17:21 PM PDT by Bernard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: cyncooper
I just got in, have I missed the CNN story on Hume's show? (Hope not.)
1,135 posted on 04/11/2003 3:17:40 PM PDT by GOPrincess
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1124 | View Replies]

To: MamaLucci
Can you imagine in your wildest dreams CNN going along with the American government trying to ***CENSOR*** them!!??

Especially in this way, by blackmailing them with threats to murder their staff? With these threats as an ONGOING THING over a DECADE of time?

1,136 posted on 04/11/2003 3:18:27 PM PDT by CFC__VRWC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 222 | View Replies]

To: GOPrincess
nope....hasn't been covered yet.
1,137 posted on 04/11/2003 3:20:30 PM PDT by goodnesswins (CNN...the MOST TRUSTED in News......by CRIMINALS!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1135 | View Replies]

To: GOPrincess
You didn't miss it.
1,138 posted on 04/11/2003 3:20:44 PM PDT by KingKongCobra
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1135 | View Replies]

To: goodnesswins
Thanks for the Hume update! Looking forward to hearing how it's covered. It needs to be covered as major *news*.

I assume the panel's going to tackle this subject too.
1,139 posted on 04/11/2003 3:21:18 PM PDT by GOPrincess
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1137 | View Replies]

To: CFC__VRWC
"Especially in this way, by blackmailing them with threats to murder their staff? With these threats as an ONGOING THING over a DECADE of time?"

Hmmmm...your statement makes me think of a certain administration and the thugs it hired, and the people who died during their time in office...(/tinfoil)

1,140 posted on 04/11/2003 3:22:00 PM PDT by goodnesswins (CNN...the MOST TRUSTED in News......by CRIMINALS!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1136 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 1,101-1,1201,121-1,1401,141-1,160 ... 1,561 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson