Pulling out would have endangered those local folks who would have had to stay behind. They would also lose a prime source for news. Factually reporting all they knew would get people tortured and killed and others kicked out of the country.
Eason Jordan knew all of this. To his credit, he did advise King Hussein when he learned of a specific threat. Now he has revealed this nastyness to all of us. Frankly, I think the guy deserves a couple of attaboys for being the first to do it. There will be others. Surely, CNN is not the only organization which had to overlook and not report stuff that it knew in order to protect its people.
No. That isn't what you do.
I've worked for a newspaper before. I was on the business side, but I was privy to discussions of what would get reported and to how things would get reported.
There is a journalistic ethic about reporting the news. Whatever it is, wherever you find it, and regardless of the consequences.
It is a compulsion. Good journalists all have it. Good news organizations all have it. It isn't something that you compromise.
You are wrong.
fwiw
CNN sold it's journalistic soul for the privilege of serving as part of Saddam's propaganda machine. You can give kudos to Eason Jordan for coming clean if you want to. Not me. He did it on a Friday when the news will die on the vine. He did it in a letter to the NYT, not on television, and without having to be questioned. He makes an mid morning puffball appearance on CNN, and instead of the same "soul cleansing" tone in the NYT letter, he makes himself almost heroic, for caring so deeply about the safety of CNN employees.
Granted, other news organizations might have had to play footsie with Saddam over the years, but none of the others I know of, were willing to then present the anti-war point of view, the bash Bush position with such impact. This Mr. Jordan, and CNN could have easily found ways to present the truth of the Saddam regime through surrogates, if they had chosen to do so.
The fact that CNN honchos all through the 90s, were big time FOBs, and the fact that CNN was concealing the brutal truth of Saddam's regime which allowed Clinton to escape having to deal with it militarily, shouldn't escape us. No doubt, Bill Clinton knew all about CNN in Baghdad.
And I think it's totally illogical to presume that CNN reporters didn't know what was going on. Peter Arnett, Christianne Amanpour, and the lesser known reporters and CNN staffers in Iraq most certainly were in on the fix. From CNN corporate headquarters, they had to have been told what to report and what not to report. No one ever quit in protest, did they? If there had ever been any doubt about Arnett and Amanpour's political leanings, we know now. They probably didn't raise an eyebrow when told not to report atrocities..hellsbells, they probably agreed with the policy for their own political reasons!!
Why did Eason Jordan come forward now? He had to, and he's doing it to protect CNN as well as himself. Now that other news organizations are incountry, CNN's part in the Iraq story was bound to come out sooner or later. They don't know yet whether Baghdad Bob will be caught and who knows what he might confess, or what he might say about his close friends at CNN.