Is it better to have "access" and report a distorted version of the news from a totalitarian country such as the former Iraq, or is it better to withdraw, call the regime on its threats, and report the truth that you DO have? The only rationales for the former course of action are self-serving, even self-aggrandizing: we are so important that the world is a better place with us on the scene even if our reporting is distorted and misleading as a result - "something" is better than "nothing."
Franklin Foer calls bullshit:
- 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."
....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.
Article comments
1 - Brian Flemming
Is there any doubt that less-than-explicit presentations of the horrors of Saddam's Iraq contributed to anti-war feeling, delayed decisive action to liberate the country, and emboldened the regime to even further desecrations and perversions? I think not.
And zero news of the perversions would have resulted in...what?
I'm not in position to defend CNN, but the conclusions you draw--that CNN did it because it made them feel "important," that their actions contributed to rather than detracted from the regime's power--are not supported by any evidence.
I'd be saying the same thing if it were Fox (and who knows what Fox did--maybe that will come to light, too). Covering Saddam's regime was difficult, to say the least. Facing a choice between presenting compromised versions of the story and presenting no story at all is a far more difficult choice than you make it out to be.
Can't you understand the moral considerations weighing on the editor or producer making this decision? It's a Hobson's choice. Neither route is obvious--1) Accept compromise and at least get some important info out; 2) Walk away, and get no info out. At least with 1 you can LEAK info to others sometimes. And at least you know what you know and can base your other reporting on that.
Route 2 is complete ignorance. Route 2 might result in more torture, not less.
You have no way to know.
A lot of factors have to be weighted in judging CNN, and they should be, and we should judge. But the snap judgment you have made, and the huge conclusions you have drawn, are hardly supported by the facts we know so far.
It's a bit like criticizing Donald Rumsfeld for befriending and arming Saddam Hussein. It's an important fact to note--but it doesn't necessarily mean he is directly responsible for the gassing of the Kurds. The U.S. faced a complicated situation back then. Snap judgments and generalizations don't help in figuring out whether the U.S. did the right thing in arming and financing and supporting Saddam Hussein.
2 - SlackMFer
Brian,
i want to commend you (and i'm being serious here) for admitting that you'd jump all over it if it were FOX. the hypocracy of the left is obvious to anyone paying attention, and at least you're man enough to admit it.