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

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

[KingKongCobra]

I suggest that you take a break and do some soul searching. It's a difficult thing to do while you are wrapped up in the storm. CNN is supposed to be a news organization. They refused to report the news in Iraq for purely monetary reasons. They helped Sadam murder his people for a few dollars. Their staff was never really safe, they were just playing Russian roullete with them. They didn't have the integrity or backbone to try to get out of their predicament. They were nothing but whores and enablers. Like the wife who lets her husband beat the kids, they never even tried to get help.

They should have got out and taken everyone with them. then, they should have reported the truth about what that country was like and gone on the offensive to have that Dictator outed. It might have cost a few lives but it might have saved 100,000 others. This couldn't be any simpler. They made a deal Satan.

[diamond6]

One question, and then I'm retiring for the night: Do you think the result your seeking could have been accomplished simply by aggressively reporting what happened to Iraqis that had immigrated to this country and have them tell us what Saddam did, or did Jordan have to tell us his story, which could have got Iraqis killed?

[MS.BEHAVIN]

With all due respect to you both..

Please stop it..

This is not about either one of you, and what possible difference will your squabbling make?

This reporter is an ass, and is hoping for exactly what you are giving to him, this "infighting" about who is right or wrong, instead of what HE did.

Don't give him the satisfaction.

Please...

Neither of you are the villians here, yet!
Don't make it so.

It is HE who should be punished, let's focus on that..

We can speculate forever about what WE would have done..it doesn't matter, the damage by him has been done..

We must not let it damage us!

Ms.B

[Mustang]

Be careful now, Dane. You don't want to confuse this diamond dude with facts, reality and common sense. After all, as his profile states, she/he is a left coast lawyer. :-))

Me thinks this NYT/CNN "item" will be around mucho-longer than the average 24 hour news cycle. Its got more legs than Radio City Hall's Rockette dancers.

Mustang sends from "Malpaso" News.

[Mustang]

Forgot to put "Music" in there someplace.

[diamond6]

I'm waiting.

[diamond6]

Good night. Flame away. Have fun. But I've outargued much more difficult foes in the courtroom then I've faced here. Facts and objectivity have always been my greatest assets. You might try it sometime.

[maryz]

The thing about it is that the author still works for CNN,

Someone on the thread asked why the story would break in the NYT and not on CNN -- maybe he doesn't expect to be working for them much longer.

[RWG]

Won't reveal information to help our side because of a journalist's ethics. Pathetic excuse for anything.

[MS.BEHAVIN]

Can this jerk be tried or not?

That is the question!

[Argh]

Thank you, Miss Slip. Bump.

[Argh]

Ping, in case you haven't been yet.

[Dane]

Looks like diamond dude, has declared victory a victory in his own head and left. I agree with you that CNN's complicity with saddam will get out to a much larger audience, Rush will probably lead with it today.

[maryz]

but how many major news organizations didn't have people inside Iraq? Even Fox did. What if they're all compromised this way?

The others may be compromised to some extent, CNN was in there years before anyone else -- so much the more "embedded," so to speak.

And maybe someone can refresh my memory: I think I saw something on one of the live war threads, early on: when Iraqi TV was knocked off (all too briefly), it was reported that Ted Turner offered CNN's resources to help.

[BreitbartSentMe]

I am disgusted by this report. How many other innocent Iraqi people were killed by Saddam's regime, because people at CNN who KNEW what was going on, and could prove it, were too COWARDLY to stand up and expose it. Forget the risk to the people who worked for CNN in Badgad, if they really wanted to, they could have worked out a plan with State or the military to spirit those people out of the country in exchange for documentation and evidence on human rights violations by this regime.

As for this author, sorry that this has eaten at you for so long, but having to live with knowing you were too much of a coward to stop atrocities like this tends to do that.......

[kcvl]

CNN SHOULD PAY FOR THIS!!!

[kcvl]

Eason Jordan

[KingKongCobra]

Hopefully, they will. How many of their other offices are witholding news? I hope they have to start answering that question very soon.

[kcvl]

Eason Jordan: Iraq ready for war
September 8, 2002 Posted: 2:10 PM EDT (1810 GMT)


Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive who recently returned from Iraq, talked Sunday with CNN's Miles O'Brien and Catherine Callaway about the situation and the complexities that could arise if the United States takes military action.



O'BRIEN: I've got to ask you -- just on a personal level, day-to-day level -- I know you met with the high and mighty while you were there, but you had an opportunity, I know, to talk to just everyday Iraqis. What is their view of the U.S., and did you ever get any even sort of whispered comments that would indicate to you one way or another how they really feel about Saddam Hussein?

JORDAN: Well, the Iraqi people are scared to speak freely, and when someone like me is in Iraq, I'm in the company, for the most part, of Iraqi officials at all times, even low-level minders, so to speak. And so it's tough to find people who will speak up and talk to you honestly about these things.

The reality is most of the people in Iraq are not Sunni Muslims, the sect that Saddam Hussein is part of, but they're Shi'a, and they're Kurds. And collectively, the Shi'a and the Kurds actually make up the vast majority of the people in Iraq, and they are natural enemies of Saddam Hussein with a few exceptions.

As far as the average person on the street is concerned, they're fed up. Unemployment is absolutely awful. Probably the majority of the Iraqi people who could be employed are not employed, and the people have gone through 20 years of war. They're exhausted, and the standard of living is a disaster. I mean, if you have a job, you're lucky to make $1 a week, and so people really struggle to get by.

[kcvl]

Jordan is the recipient of three Emmy awards, three Peabody awards, four CableACE awards, the New York Film and TV Festival Award, the National Headliner Award, the duPont Award, the World Hunger Media Award, the Livingston Award and the Vanguard Award for Young Leadership from the National Cable Television Association.