Jordan and Iraq - I've

Jordan and Iraq - I've gotten a few emails from people discussing Eason Jordan's revelations that CNN sat on details of Hussein's brutality. I have to say, I've learned a bit, to the point where I've changed my mind.

My initital reaction was "wow - that had to have been a tough call'.

Today, I'm a lot less sympathetic. If, as Jordan says, they were unable to really report - to get at the truth under the conditions to which they were subjected by the Hussein regime - then why report at all?

When one is hamstrung from reporting the story, doesn't one cease to be a news organization, and become a de facto PR operation?

Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center says:

Rich Noyes, director of research at the conservative Media Research Center, said that "Jordan now admits that CNN kept many of Saddam's secrets.
"Have other networks also censored their own tales of Saddam's evil?" he asked.
"If accurate reporting from Iraq was impossible, why was access to this dictatorship so important in the first place? And what truths about the thugs who run other totalitarian states — like North Korea, Cuba and Syria — are fearful and/or access-hungry reporters hiding from the American public?" Mr. Noyes said.

. There are many questions that need to be answered. As Sean Hannity (whom I normally can't stand to listen to) asked last night, does anyone honestly think that CNN would have held off running the story even one day had Hussein's regime been idenfied with the political right?

And the big question - what did the other networks, and the newspapers and wire services, know? When did they know it?

And will this change any of the major media's priorities? The New Republic asks in this editorial:

We think that's an excellent question. But the thought that occurs to us as we read Eason's op-ed is: Well, then why the hell did CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, write us a scathing letter accusing TNR's Franklin Foer of "cross[ing] over into fiction" when his piece, "Air War," chronicled the extent to which CNN's (and other networks') desire to appease the Iraqi regime was distorting its news coverage. "I'm not sure why anyone would go through the process of obtaining the Iraqi visas Foer describes," Arraf wrote, "other than to fuel dinner-party stories about the horrors of getting into Iraq or to rack up frequent guest points at the InterContinental Hotel." Come to think of it, we're not sure either.

The day that CNN decided to compromise on the truth in this story - as tough as the call no doubt was - was a dark day for American journalism.

Posted by Mitch at April 13, 2003 02:52 PM