News we kept to our selves.

[shri]

MUST read article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/11/opinion/11JORD.html

Enough said.

[shanx999]

http://www.theonion.com/onion3913/oi...liberated.html

[HKFella]

Thanks both of you. Re the first one, reminiscent of all the intrigue, cunning, and barbarism of medieval rulers and would-be rulers in Indian history books of old. Remember all those horrors inflicted on cousins, brothers, fathers during wars of succession and whatever else in Mughal times?

Onion was a great find, Shanx99!

[kombuchakid]

what was Jordan expecting when he decided to unburden himself, I wonder

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003336

this WSJ site requires registration so--------------

CNN's Access of Evil
The network of record covered Saddam's repression with propaganda.

BY FRANKLIN FOER
Monday, April 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT

As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime--murders, tortures, assassination plots--that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

Of course, Mr. Jordan may feel he deserves a pinch of credit for coming clean like this. But this admission shouldn't get him any ethical journalism trophies. For a long time, CNN denied that its coverage skimped on truth. While I researched a story on CNN's Iraq coverage for the New Republic last October, Mr. Jordan told me flatly that his network gave "a full picture of the regime." In our conversation, he challenged me to find instances of CNN neglecting stories about Saddam's horrors. If only I'd had his Times op-ed!

Would that this were an outbreak of honesty, however belated. But it isn't. If it were, Mr. Jordan wouldn't be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry--and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships. For CNN, the highest prize is "access," to score live camera feeds from a story's epicenter. Dictatorships understand this hunger, and also that it provides blackmail opportunities. In exchange for CNN bureaus, dictatorships require adherence to their own rules of reportage. They create conditions where CNN--and other U.S. media--can do little more than toe the regime's line.

The Iraq example is the telling one. Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf has turned into an international joke, but the operation of his ministry was a model of totalitarian efficiency. The ministry compiled dossiers on U.S. journalists. It refused to issue visas to anyone potentially hostile--which meant that it didn't issue visas to reporters who strayed from al-Sahhaf's talking points. CNN correspondents Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Richard Roth, to name a few, were banned for critical reporting. It didn't take much to get on this list. A reporter who referred to "Saddam" (not "President Saddam Hussein") was shut out for "disrespect." If you didn't cover agitprop, like Saddam's 100% victory in October's referendum, the ministry made it clear that you were out.

Leaving, however, might have been preferable to staying under these conditions. Upon arrival in Iraq, journalists contended with constant surveillance. Minders obstructed their every move, dictated camera angles, and prevented unauthorized interviews. When the regime worried that it had lost control of a journalist, it resorted to more heavy-handed methods. Information ministry officials would wake journalists in the dead of night, drive them to government buildings, and denounce them as CIA plants. The French documentary filmmaker Joel Soler described to me how his minder took him to a hospital to ostensibly examine the effects of sanctions, but then called in a nurse with a long needle "for a series of blood tests." Only Mr. Soler's screaming prevented an uninvited jab.

With so little prospect for reporting the truth, you'd think that CNN and other networks would have stopped sending correspondents into Iraq. But the opposite occurred. Each time the regime threatened to pull the plug, network execs set out to assiduously reassure them. Mr. Jordan made 13 of these trips.

To be fair, CNN was not the only organization to play this game. But as the network of record, soi-disant, they have a longer trail than most. It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged. For nearly a decade, the network gave credulous treatment to orchestrated anti-U.S. protests. When Saddam won his most recent "election," CNN's Baghdad reporter Jane Arraf treated the event as meaningful: "The point is that this really is a huge show of support" and "a vote of defiance against the United States." After Saddam granted amnesty to prisoners in October, she reported, this "really does diffuse one of the strongest criticisms over the past decades of Iraq's human-rights records."
For long stretches, Ms. Arraf was American TV's only Baghdad correspondent. Her work was often filled with such parrotings of the Baathist line. On the Gulf War's 10th anniversary, she told viewers, "At 63, [Saddam] mocks rumors he is ill. Not just standing tall but building up. As soon as the dust settled from the Gulf War, and the bodies were buried, Iraq began rebuilding." She said little about human-rights violations, violent oppression, or festering resentment towards Saddam. Scouring her oeuvre, it is nearly impossible to find anything on these defining features of the Baathist epoch.

Reading Mr. Jordan now, you get the impression that CNN had no ethical option other than to soft-pedal. But there were alternatives. CNN could have abandoned Baghdad. Not only would they have stopped recycling lies, they could have focused more intently on obtaining the truth about Saddam. They could have diverted resources to Kurdistan and Jordan (the country), where recently arrived Iraqis could speak without fear of death. They could have exploited exile groups with underground contacts.

There's another reason why Mr. Jordan doesn't deserve applause. He says nothing about the lessons of Baghdad. After all, the network still sends correspondents to such countries as Cuba, Burma and Syria, ruled by dictators who impose media "guidelines." Even if CNN ignores the moral costs of working with such regimes, it should at least pay attention to the practical costs. These governments only cooperate with CNN because it suits their short-term interests. They don't reward loyalty. It wasn't surprising, then, that the Information Ministry booted CNN from Baghdad in the war's first days. In a way CNN's absence at this pivotal moment provides a small measure of justice: The network couldn't use its own cameras to cover the fall of a regime that it had treated with such astonishing respect.

Mr. Foer, an associate editor of The New Republic, is the author of "Soccer Explains the World," to be published soon by HarperCollins.

[kombuchakid]

missed this earlier-readers response to the above article

READERS REPONSES

CNN's Access of Evil
FRANKLIN FOER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Continues to Choose Cowardice
Dan Jaracz - Andover, Ma.

Why should any of us be surprised at CNN's posturing as victim of the fallen Iraqi regime? Every inch of liberal turf is draped in claims of victimization rather than honesty and responsibility for its own circumstances. CNN chose and continues to choose ratings and cowardice over the more difficult path of ethical and moral behavior.





Collaborator's News Network
Brainard Leonora - Melbourne, Fla.

The problem now becomes: Can you trust any news on CNN? In which other ways are they compromising ethical integrity right now?

Ted Turner's vision was that CNN would be a tool for global peace. Like it has been said before, if Mr. Turner were dead he'd be turning in his grave now.

In the Clinton era, CNN was called the Clinton News Network. A new name is in order: the Collaborator's News Network.





Evil In Deed
Mari Hobgood - Marietta, Ga.

Amen, Mr. Foer: It has been said that half truths are worse than lies and CNN must admit its complicity in propping up that despicable regime. Considering the information in its possession, then why did CNN actively discourage support for George Bush in his efforts to free those people? Evil indeed.





Worse?
J. Reynolds - Houston

Midway through World War II, neutral agents were given credible information smuggled out of concentration camps about the Nazi's enslavement and industrial extermination of the Jews. The agents remained quiet, and after the war explained they feared that publicizing the information only would have made things worse for the Jews. And the question is, how could things possibly have been worse?





Stirring Up Anti-Americanism
David A. Lessnau - Niceville, Fla.

So, CNN has admitted to being a propaganda arm for the worst tyrant this side of Stalin. Along with the doubt this casts on whatever coverage they still give in the rest of the world, what affect did these lies have on official U.S. foreign policy? Sure, the people making these foreign policy decisions had access to the real information. But, they still had to take John Q. Public's response into account. If the public's response was steered toward an anti-American, pro-Saddam one by CNN, then how were things changed? Worse yet, since CNN is global in reach, how much of the current anti-Americanism around the world can be laid directly at CNN's doorstop? The final question, of course, is: Why does CNN still have a broadcast license?





Wait Until to See What the Records Say
Carl Withrow - Manassas, Va.

There are too many things about this CNN's Eason Jordan deal that aren't adding up.

For one thing the normal media feeding frenzy hasn't taken place. Any other time, any other place you would have needed a huge fly swatter to fight your way through the swarms.

Sometimes the only defense left is confession. In these cases it's usually done to save one's soul when facing certain death from old age, illness, anticipated suicide or an enemy. While CNN, Eason Jordan's and/or other yet to come networks and representative editors and journalists motives are debatable, I haven't seen or heard any of them down on their knees in prayer to God almighty.

CBS News this morning reports that the Marines have found Iraqi Secret Police Files in a massive underground vault the size of two football fields with millions of documents and records going back more than three decades. Pictures, personal details and entire history recorded in minute, chilling detail according to CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan.

Does anyone believe that Saddam Hussein's regime only kept records about it's own citizens?





Can't Believe Everything You See
Linda Birtle - New Port Richey, Fla.

I think this story needs more and fuller TV coverage for all of America and the world to know, we can no longer blindly believe every word the media has to say! It is time for all the truth to come out!





And Yet They Complain About Bush
MichaelF - Zurich, Switzerland

CNN's being forced by Saddam's minders to refer to him as "President Saddam Hussein" might have a flip side: CNN (at least the European version) more often than not refers to President George W. Bush as "Bush"--I'm confident that there is no government agency in America "forcing" them to do that. It's just the typical lack of respect and leftist leanings of CNN.

CNN admittedly was not only "embedded" with Saddam but "in bed" with him. The dangers of the Stockholm Syndrome ascribed to the journalists embedded with the military pale in comparison to CNN's morally depraved decision to collaborate with a fascist dictator and not report on state-sanctioned rape squads, torture chambers and the like. CNN's sacrifice of truth about Iraq just to maintain access to a fascist thug's regime is jaw-dropping. Using a twist on an old criminal defense saying, it's like the child who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court for being a victimized as an orphan.

Editor's Comment:
Forget Serbia, forget Iraq. "The government we have the toughest time with is the U.S. government," said Eason Jordan, CNN's president for global newsgathering, at the network's annual World Report Conference May 4. Click here to read the entire 1999 Atlanta Business Chronicle article.




I Can't Believe CNN Anymore
Shelley Taylor - Tucson, Ariz.

My husband and I watched TV in complete elation this afternoon, as cable stations, one after another, showed the American POWs as they prepared to leave Iraq for medical evaluation and care and reunions with their families. My husband flipped through the different news channels and both of us watched with tears in our eyes as this wonderful story of rescue unfolded again and again. My husband changed to CNN and Wolf Blitzer filled the screen and I thought to myself, "I will never believe a word you say again." The credibility of the network is damaged, no matter what the reasoning behind their lies about the regime of Saddam were.

Somewhere I picked up the idea that TV news organizations where in business to broadcast in a truthful manner, the information in our world. I have been so naive. I was completely wrong about trusting the news I watched about Iraq which, came from CNN. Half truths, twisted lies, all as a means to gain access the Baath party. Why? Was it all for ratings? I wonder now. Truth and professional integrity were lost along the way. There are other sources of information, thankfully. I will not turn to CNN again for a view of world events through their eyes.

Right Now the Eagles song "Lying Eyes" should start playing in the background. Happy Monday. So glad the POWs are coming home.






Surprise, Surprise, Surprise
Thomas Dillard - Escazu, Costa Rica

Golly, gee whiz! Even I decided very early in CNN's history that they were for sale. The Ted and Jane duo and their good works always seemed to be selected toward lowering our distaste for the communists and their governments. It did result in the defection and legal immigration of some great athletes to thrill and delight us. Most became citizens as soon as possible. This tells me they were smarter and more honorable than Ted and Jane.





The U.S. Military Was Right
David Lincoln - Edmonton, Alberta

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, Walter Duranty filed stories which put that horrid regime in a good light. Malcolm Muggeridge received some information about the less becoming aspects of Strongman Stalin's rule. Needless to say, Muggeridge was vindicated. Now, what does this mean. CNN can be compared to Mr. Duranty, and it happened to be the Marines and other U.S. military units to get the real story.