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.

[MamaLucci]

If I might add one line:

Think about it.
These journalists were there commemorating freely a "US" atrocity,
while they knew their colleagues had been tortured by Hussein
***AND DID NOT REPORT IT, JUST TO KEEP MARKET SHARE***
That is what is wrong with them being there.

[Howlin]

This is just so infuriating.

[texasbluebell]

I sure hope more pick up on it. I know the left side of the media will try to "spin" it in favour of CNN but I really think these CNN guys need to be taken to task on this in a really hard way.

Anybody want to bet that the "big guys"--Petah, Tom, and Danblather--won't touch this story with a ten foot pole tonight?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads ups!

[FBD]

So, this will now be the liberal media line of defense as to why they were opposed to the war...they lied for...appeasement?

[goodnesswins]

Hmmm.....who is the CNN reporter at the daily Whitehouse briefings....? If I were THIS President (and staff) I'd surely be reconsidering what they were privy to and where they were allowed......not that the "Individual reporter" is the problem....just that CNN as a whole doesn't seem qualified in any journalistic sense.

[G Larry]

"CNN was complicit in this regime's power. CNN was more interested in keeping a bureau open in Baghdad than telling the truth."

What makes this even worse is their delight in call President Bush a liar and a war monger, when it is clear the President's motives were well founded.

[texasbluebell]

IMHO this was the network's responsibility. I will never believe that CNN wasn't to some extent aware of what was going on.

Yes and yes.

[Howlin]

John King.

And can't you just hear him saying that he believes the White House has a right to withhold information from CNN.

That IS the title of this thread: The News We Kept To Ourselves

[goodnesswins]

Yech...John King....he's the one who at first refused to refer to the President as "President Bush." Never have trusted that guy anyway....

[spodefly]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/11/sprj.irq.cnn.plot/index.html

[MizSterious]

"What makes this even worse is their delight in call President Bush a liar and a war monger, when it is clear the President's motives were well founded."

Ah, yes, but CNN has ardent supporters even here. I don't understand it, but I've seen it with my own eyes. At CNN, Bush=bad, troops=perpetrators of war crimes, Hussein=benevolent dictator. CNN seems to live in a strange world.

[Howlin]

Brad.Turell@turner.com
Walter.Isaacson@turner.com
Rick.Davis@turner.com
Eason.Jordan@Turner.com
stevecase@aol.com
allfeedback@cnn.com

[No Income Tax]

I am not saying there is no bias at CNN. There is. I repeat - they have done a good job covering the war.

You and I have a different definition of the word "good."

[Yankee]

Will this finally put an end to the small minority of Freeper's claims that maintain that CNN is giving the best, most serious and accurate coverage of this war?

Or will they, like the dummys over at DU, continue with their foolish beliefs in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

I will never believe CNN's reportage of anything, ever again. Not that I ever did much before.

They are a sad, pathetic left-wing propaganda machine.

9/11 and this war on terror have exposed and toppled more "corrupt and evil regimes" than anyone could have bargained or hoped for.

(The UN, CNN, France, The DemonRat Party etc, etc, etc.....)

[goodnesswins]

NAH....CNN is just usually FIRST on site when something happens.....then, when everyone else gets there the REAL reporting starts.

[MamaLucci]

I still think that your original point last night -- that CNN would NEVER put up with those kinds of limitations in this country -- is the crux of the matter.

dogbyte12's post ties in well with this point.

"Think about it. These journalists were there
commemorating freely a "US" atrocity, while they knew
their colleagues had been tortured by Hussein.
That is what is wrong with them being there."

CNN felt free to report alleged American "atrocities",
while they withheld reporting on KNOWN
Iraqi atrocities.

[MizSterious]

"Will this finally put an end to the small minority of Freeper's claims that maintain that CNN is giving the best, most serious and accurate coverage of this war? "

NO. Some continue to believe that fiction, and probably will until the bitter end.