A former CNN correspondent in Baghdad talks about shading the news on behalf of the network — and how it caused him to resign.
In each of these meetings, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan made their pitch: Saddam Hussein would have an hour’s time on CNN’s worldwide network; there would be no interruptions, no commercials. I was astonished. From both the tone and the content of these conversations, it seemed to me that CNN was virtually groveling for the interview.
The day after one such meeting, I was on the roof of the Ministry of Information, preparing for my first “live shot” on CNN. A producer came up and handed me a sheet of paper with handwritten notes. “Tom Johnson wants you to read this on camera,” he said. I glanced at the paper. It was an item-by-item summary of points made by Information Minister Latif Jassim in an interview that morning with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan.
The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister’s points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. “You were a bit flat there, Peter,” he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein’s propaganda.
I wonder how many more stories of this sort we’ll be hearing.
(via InstaPundit)
I haven’t watched much CNN, or TV news in general much during the war. So I can’t comment directly on lots of detailed coverage I’ve seen. But are they really “sucking up to Saddam” as Instapundit put it? I find that a little hard to believe, considering all the flag-waving graphics and endless footage of the Saddam statue that’s been plastered over the airwaves. Who exactly has been “reading Saddam Hussein’s propaganda” this time? (The statue footage itself was propaganda, under most definitions of the word.) And is CNN more liberal than Fox is conservative?
I don’t think it’s a matter of “liberal” vs “conservative,” as much as “principled” vs “pragmatic.”
It certainly sounds like, from this account as well as Jordan’s “confession,” CNN was willing to do whatever it could to stay in Iraq. While it was occasionally booted out anyway (heck, not even Al Jazeera could toe the party line closely enough for the Iraqi regime), it always managed to get back in somehow, even though it meant these sorts of shenanigans.