The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves [must read]

The New York Times ^ | 04/11/03 | EASON JORDAN

[Pokey78]

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. 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.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. 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 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. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

[Timesink]

Pack up their bags and go. Just as Georgie Stepalloverus did when ABC ordered him out of Doha because they found fault with General Vince Brooks. Throw a hissy fit, whine about censorship and freedom of the press, and take off.

Details?

[Bryan24]

Did anyone see the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN HUG the CNN correspondant and give him a kiss on the cheeck before he got into his car? Fox News got it on tape.

Unfreaking believable!

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

My email to the erstwhile Mr. Jordan:

Mr. Jordan,

I am no fan of CNN. As a conservative, the leftist slant of your network is intolerable to me. However, the tiny shred of credibility I once thought you had is now gone after reading the New York Times article about your complicity in covering up the horrors of the former regime in Iraq, in the name of keeping a correspondent and crew in Baghdad.

I was disgusted to read about your actions and decisions to hiding the atrocities from the public, who in this case had an overwhelming right to know.

In addition to this, your network has promoted anti-war fervor by focusing on protests and by taking the claims of marxists like ANSWER and NION seriously. I can only guess that your CNN minders keep you and your staff in line to prevent upsetting Mr. Turner and contradicting his world view.

How you can sleep at night is beyond me. I hope the blood of the Iraqi martyrs continues to haunt you until you find solace in repentance to God. Only He can forgive what you have done.

[mwl1]

North Koreans, Chinese, Syrians, etc will pick up that (embedded) message and continue to roll out the red carpet for the CNN traitors.

Good point, but remember, we can now denounce, repudiate, and/or question the reliability of anything that CNN now reports in a totalitarian country. Their integrity is now in tatters, if we continue to push the story along.

[laz17]

Did anyone see the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN HUG the CNN correspondant and give him a kiss on the cheeck before he got into his car?

I saw it. And it makes this whole thing even MORE disgusting than it already is, if that were possible.

The bottom line is that in CNN's estimation, maintaining a presence in Baghdad was the be all and end all. It didn't matter to them that to stay there meant suppressing the truth and parroting Saddam's lies and propaganda. All they cared about was maintaining their presence in Baghdad at any cost. The excuse that they were protecting the lives of their staff is utterly lame. All they had to do to protect those lives was to pull out of Baghdad, plain and simple. If their staff wasn't in Baghdad, their lives wouldn't be in danger. But CNN kept their staff there because maintaining their presence in Baghdad was the most important consideration for them, and they did what they had to do to keep the staff safe from harm -- they suppressed the truth and spread Saddam's lies.

The spinners who are trying to rationalize CNN's crimes by focusing on the need to protect the lives of the staff cannot be allowed to get away with this blatant lie. CNN didn't have to suppress truth and report lies to protect their staff. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS REMOVE THE STAFF FROM IRAQ. And if they claim that they HAD to keep the staff there in order to report, counter them by asking, WHAT THE HELL POINT WAS THERE IN REPORTING WHEN YOU KNEW YOU WOULD BE REPORTING LIES? WHEN YOU KNEW YOU'D HAVE TO PARROT PROPAGANDA SO THAT YOUR STAFF WOULDN'T BE KILLED? Their whole premise for staying in Baghdad in order to report is self-defeating.

Dear God, these people are criminals, and anyone who doesn't think they are criminals is a criminal as well.

[mwl1]

We should get this information to our soldiers in Iraq... maybe they will simply ask the embedded CNN reporters to leave their unit or "accidentally" break their cameras and other equipment.

[laz17]

Take a long walk off a short pier, jackass. Whatever drug is flowing through your bloodstream, it must be pretty strong stuff.

[mwl1]

Someone in the House who has committee jurisdiction over the FCC should instantly begin a congressional investigation.

Yes, a letter-writing campaign would help, not to the FCC but to members of this committee.

Does anyone know which House committee has jurisdiction, and who the majority members (and chair) are?

[laz17]

I don't remember exactly which day it was, but it was discussed here on FR. ABC decided that they weren't getting any additional info from the CENTCOM briefings than what they already knew, and they pulled out their reporter because they thought there was no point in him being there.

[AnAmericanMother]

I am an insurance defense attorney, who has high integrity and honesty.

Ick. I used to be an insurance defense attorney, I hate to be shoved in the same barrel as this guy.

MOST of us let our Martindale-Hubbell rating speak to our integrity, honesty, and competence, rather than tooting our own horn. Wonder what his is?

[Terridan]

You would have thought that they at least would have slammed the Sarandon crowd, or members of congress... no they instead gave them unlimited air time and fueled the communist peace marchers. If stories like these don't break them, I don't know what else will.

[chiller]

All of CNN's actions fall into place now, don't they?
1)Peter Arnett aiding and abetting
2)Christianne Amanpour every damn time she opens her mouth
3)Eason Jorden hiding the truth
4) Hugs between Iraqi officials and CNN staff.

It's pretty clear to me CNN jumped into bed with Saddam & Co. to help defeat 'W' and the US.

[Matchett-PI]

"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." ~ afraidfortherepublic

I agree. I've been doing that for a LONG time. I try not to stay at any hotels/motels that doesn't have Fox News.

One quick way to tell them is to click on the "Fox News Channel Hotel Finder" at the Fox News Channel web site http://www.foxnews.com and they make it easy for us to notify any hotels in a given destination that don't carry it. One can also call 800-683-4136 for the hotels that carry Fox News.

Did you see this post today on another thread, yet?:

Last night we went to dinner at Bennigans. Every TV in the place was tuned to cnn. I asked the bartender if she had seen the news today about cnn. She said she hadn't, so I told her about cnn knowing about the murder and torture going on in Iraq for over a decade, and not reporting on it. I told her it was in the New York Times today. She rolled her eyes and said she couldn't change the channel but would tell the manager. After I walked away she clearly related what I had said to the other bar crawlers and they had a good laugh.

Ten minutes later the channel still hadn't changed, so we asked our waitress to send ove the manager.

We told the manager the same thing we told the bartender. She at least appeared shocked. She then proceeded to tell us that it was BENNIGANS CORPORATE POLICY THAT ALL THEY CAN SHOW IS CNN OR ESPN IN THEIR RESTAURANTS! She did immediately change the TVs over to ESPN.

I think Bennigans needs a good freep to let them know how we feel about their choice of news networks. Their contact info is:

toll-free at 800-727-TELL.

The mailing address is:

Bennigan's
6500 International Parkway, Ste. 1000
Plano, TX 75093
Main Phone No. (972) 588-5000

No e-mail address given on their site.

54 posted on 04/12/2003 11:02 AM EDT by Crusher138
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/891583/posts?page=54#54

[PoisedWoman]

You've reached the heart of the matter and your comment bears repeating:

WHAT THE HELL POINT WAS THERE IN REPORTING WHEN YOU KNEW YOU WOULD BE REPORTING LIES?

WHAT THE HELL POINT WAS THERE IN REPORTING WHEN YOU KNEW YOU WOULD BE REPORTING LIES?

WHAT THE HELL POINT WAS THERE IN REPORTING WHEN YOU KNEW YOU WOULD BE REPORTING LIES?

[MinuteGal]

Matchett, thanks for your bulldogging on this matter. I will contact Bennigan's as you requested, immedjitly!

Leni

[diamond6]

I'm sorry what I have to say is beyond your limited IQ. Maybe you should try school again.

[diamond6]

You are a fraud. A Martindale-Hubbell does not rate individual attornies. If you were really an attorney, you would know that.

[AnAmericanMother]

Nope, look at the individual entries in the front, not the firm 'cards' in the main section. After some (not all) names you will see a one or two letter rating. A, B or C for professional excellence, and a V if present for very high ethical standards. An "AV" rating is relatively rare.

The M-H ratings are based on survey letters circulated to selected attorneys in your practice area and zip code, once you have been in practice long enough to qualify.

Now, who did you say was a fraud again?

[AnAmericanMother]

And just because I really hate being called a fraud, and love to show up poseurs who don't know what they are talking about, here is the relevant portion of M-H's website:

Martindale-Hubbell Attorney Ratings

Consider yourself busted.