Posted on 04/10/2003 9:16:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
No doubt because Bill O' has been on them mercilessly the past couple of weeks, deservedly so. I know he's read some letters from people saying they've cancelled their subscriptions with the LA Times.
My thoughts also.
We need to do more than just personally boycotting CNN. We need to tell every hotel that we want Fox News Channel in the room, not CNN. And other public places that offer a variety of stations but provide only CNN for straight news (like my YMCA). We need to speak up and tell them why.
< snip >
Part of CNN's success is that it realizes that when it comes to covering wars, it's not just good journalism that pulls an audience. It is star power. Which is why their Diva of Disaster, Christiane Amanpour, has been gliding through the halls of the Marriott in recent days.
From the day she arrived, Amanpour has lived up to her reputation as star war correspondent.
In her first news conference, from the lawn outside the Taliban embassy, she showed up in a dry-cleaned war jacket, penny loafers and what looked like a new pair of Gucci sunglasses. (That set her apart from another network anchor, who dressed for her first day of war correspondence in an outfit she could have picked up on New York's Fifth Avenue. Her producers told her to dress down in khaki for the next satellite feed.)
Amanpour lost no time letting the media pack know that she intended to be the alpha dog. Growing frustrated when the men in turbans at the Taliban embassy ignored a question of hers, she began shouting at the top of her lungs. "Who's making the final decision, who's making the final decision?" she literally screamed, as she tried to get an answer about who in Afghanistan would decide whether or not to release accused terrorist Osama bin Laden.
"Oh, so impolite, so impolite," tut-tutted a Lebanese journalist. "She will get nothing with this approach."
In fact, she did get her answer. It would be Afghanistan's mullah-in-chief, Mohammed Omar, who would make the decision.
From the start, Amanpour was airlifted into Islamabad to go head to head with the BBC and the American networks for the "Big Get," the first interview with Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf.
"When Christiane comes to an event, she's going for the ratings grabber, the interview that shows that CNN still gets the big fish before anyone else can get the hook in the water," said the CNN producer. "It's a lot of pressure. She's the closer. So she's aggressive, but that's what it takes to get to the top of CNN."
The manoeuvring between the BBC and CNN went on behind the scenes for days. And for days, Amanpour seemed to grow increasingly irritated as she moved from her room to the roof of the Marriott, where she broadcast live to the world but got to see almost nothing of Pakistan.
"It's just too loud, it's just too loud," Amanpour complained one morning, as she sat in the hotel's restaurant, where the TV was turned to the BBC. "Do you mind if I turn it down?" She got up and turned it off, while the rest of the journalists in the room watched wonderingly.
But her mood seemed to lighten soon after that. She had gotten the "Get," beating out the BBC for the first interview with the General. CNN trumpeted its exclusive. Every journalist in Islamabad watched the TV and took notes.
And a CNN gopher booked Amanpour a ticket out of Islamabad for London, business class.
(Apparently this was originally in the Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/)
You must have an iron stomach. *g*
I'm sure much of their previous coverage will look damning after this little revelation.
I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, 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).Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
It's not clear in the article what exactly he said to King Hussein.
Probably he was afraid of or figured someone else would tell the truth about C**p "News" Network and he thought it would look better if he "came clean" first. I've seen it with people - if they so-called apologize first, with less, then when more bad stuff comes out they don't look so bad.
Way to go, Nicmarlo ! GREAT Condemnation Letter to CNN !
Whatever his reason for unburdening his soulless soul, it smells like Classic Clinton to me.
With Fox News Channel all over Baghdad he had to move fast.
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