April 13, 2003

CNN: Complicity News Network

Here's an update of the CNN admission that it covered for the Saddam Hussein terror regime numerous times while operating its bureau in Baghdad, a journalistic ethics scandal I first covered here extensively last week.

Over at the excellent Winds of Change blog, C. Blake Powers wonders if CNN news executive Eason Jordan's lame attempt to explain away CNN's failure to expose numerous instances of torture committed by Saddam's regime isn't really an attempt to divert attention from a more horrible truth. Writes Powers:

There is something buried here. There is something that someone is trying to keep hidden, or deflect. Every bit of the Chicago school that remains in me just hit the end of the chain with a snarl. Somebody is hiding something. Somebody is scared that something really bad is going to come out. Let's find out what it is.

Everyone and their pet dog are going to go after the obvious and justifiably castigate CNN for doing what they did. I will limit my shots to the following: You can't cut it in Chicago. With what you knew, you should have pulled out, protected what you could, and gone in with everything you had to expose the regime. From the first time one of yours was hit, you should have hit back twice as hard. The hell with your obligations to your viewers that you trashed, you owed it to your people, including your sources. You look after your own. That is one thing the Chicago school and good militaries have in common. CNN failed their viewers, their stockholders, the American public, and most of all - their people. An organization that fails on any of these fronts, but particularly the last, is beneath contempt.

That off my chest, let's get to the real meat of this. What are they hiding? It is clear that they are hiding something. What is going to come out from Iraq about CNN that caused this form of pre-emptive strike in such a high profile manner? Now, it could possibly be that this really is the self-aggrandizing conscience clearing that the outer surface shows. But, I know my history. I know my history of journalism. I know what this means in Chicago, and to any reporter with half a brain and a nose for a story.

INTERESTING: The Society of Professional Journalists has seen fit to publish zero stories about the CNN ethics scandal on its website. Now why would SPJ be covering for CNN?