"MEDIA MATTERS
CNN admits sitting on Ritter story
'We'd rather be a little slow and 100 percent right'
Posted: January 23, 2003
3:52 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Cable News Network, which markets itself as "the world's news leader," says it sat on the Scott Ritter sex-scandal story for several days without a whisper of it, and other major news outlets have avoided extensive coverage – if any coverage – as well.
The former weapons inspector admitted on CNN's "Newsnight with Aaron Brown" program last night that he was in fact arrested in June 2001, but he refused to disclose if it had to do with allegations he was looking to meet underage girls from the Internet.
"For a couple of days we knew about the allegation and did not report it," said Brown at the top of his show. "Lots of notes [were sent] to us this week about why we were silent. Many – not all, but many assumed it was a political decision because some people see everything that way."
The Schenectady Daily Gazette and New York Daily News originally reported on Saturday and Sunday respectively that Ritter allegedly had an online sexual discussion with someone he thought was an underage girl. The "girl," however, turned out to be an undercover police investigator, according to the Daily News, whose sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the story has failed to gain much national publicity until now. In fact, a document search using the Lexis-Nexis archive system reveals the Associated Press national wire has still not published the Ritter sex scandal as of the posting of this article. The story has only hit the local and state AP wire in New York.
It has received coverage among Albany, N.Y., area media, and a few mentions on national programs such as the Rush Limbaugh radio show, and "Buchanan and Press" on MSNBC, which discussed the matter briefly yesterday with the news director of WNYT-TV, the station which had footage of Ritter's mug shot.
WorldNetDaily has done at least four stories following Ritter since the news broke last weekend.
CNN's Brown did provide an explanation as to the delay in the network's reporting of the matter:
"Whenever it's possible," said Brown, "we don't report what we, CNN, cannot confirm. In the case of the Ritter story, we worked it for a couple of days, trying to find the facts, but we were not willing to run with someone else's reporting.
"We needed to find sources. We needed to vet them as best we can. And when we as an organization are comfortable with what we know, then we report it. Now, it's not perfect. Sometimes we do rely on other reporting if we're unable to get to an area, for example.
"Sometimes we report what others have with an acknowledgment that the story is based on someone's other work, according to AP or according to 'The New York Times.' But that is more the exception than the rule. We do it because we are responsible for what we put on the air. It's really that simple.
"We have rules and standards. We know them, we're comfortable with them. Even when it means we sometimes get beat on a story. We'd rather be a little slow and 100 percent right."
Right after this story broke, I said that other news agencies would wait until the courts and other offices were open (Tuesday) to independently verify the story before they went it. And I was right--at least as far as CNN goes, but so far, Fox News has been all but MIA on this as a story. So far, only CNN has gotten the interview (I call the Catherine Crier "interview" with Ritter yesterday more of a smoochfest), and much to Ritter's surprise, Aaron Brown did a quiet, but devastating interview with Ritter. And I didn't see Ritter on any cable shows today (a rehash of Aaron Brown's interview was shown this morning & it was discussed on Fox & Friends), much less on any network news.