The News CNN didnt show

[luckydevil]

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

The News We Kept to Ourselves

By EASON JORDAN

TLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

[redman]

escholz beat you to it:

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25403

[luckydevil]

my bad

[Sarge]

I guess this should be renamed, "All the news that we decide is fit for you to hear". Were are all of our friends on the left on this. The silence is deafening.

[The Sisko]

Reporting this type of information would have been no different than reporting the exact location and activities of our troops. It would have endagered their lives and their mission. Sometimes discretion has to be used both for the safety of your contacts as well as for your ability to be able to gather news in the future.

As sad as covering up the truth is and regardless of his true motives, he did the right thing.

[luckydevil]

Here is a interview from Eason Jordan on Oct 25, 2002

http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts_102502_jordan.html

BOB GARFIELD: After journalists were expelled from Iraq on Thursday, CNN head of news-gathering Eason Jordan, called the move "a Draconian measure that will sharply curtail the world's knowledge about what is happening in Iraq. Iraq is often displeased with CNN," says Jordan, "but especially this week when the network reported from the scene of that extraordinary protest in Baghdad."

EASON JORDAN: The big beef was that we reported that gunfire was used to disperse the demonstrators which is absolutely irrefutable fact, but the Iraqi government sometimes denies the facts and refuses to acknowledge the truth.

BOB GARFIELD: Well what kind of weird conversation is it with the Iraqi officials that you're having when you're holding up a, a piece of videotape and saying this is black and they're saying no, no that's white. It's bizarre!

EASON JORDAN: Well there are a lot of bizarre things in Iraq, and unfortunately the Iraqi officials refuse to look at the videotape because they said they didn't care what it showed or what was heard on the tape because the reality -the Iraqi reality - was very different from the actual facts.

BOB GARFIELD: I'm sure you have seen Franklin Foer's article in The New Republic which charges that the Western press is appeasing the Iraqi regime in order to maintain its visas -- to be there reporting should a war ultimately break out. What's your take on that?

EASON JORDAN: The writer clearly doesn't have a clear understanding of the realities on the ground because CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it's prepared to be forthright; is forthright in its reporting. We wouldn't have a team in northern Iraq right now if we didn't want to upset the Saddam Hussein regime. We wouldn't report on the demonstration if we didn't want to upset the Saddam Hussein regime. We wouldn't have been thrown out of Iraq already 5 times over the last several years if we were there to please the Saddam Hussein regime. So the story was lopsided, unfair and chose to ignore facts that would refute the premise of the article.

BOB GARFIELD: Well what is the calculus? In the New Republic article he cites the coverage of Saddam Hussein's birthday by CNN which he deemed to be not a huge news event. Are you tossing bones to Saddam Hussein in order to be there when, when it really matters?

EASON JORDAN: No. I don't think that's the case at all. Now, there is Iraqi propaganda that is news! I mean there is propaganda from a lot of governments around the world that is newsworthy and we should report on those things. Saddam Hussein's birthday is a big deal in that country. We're not reading Iraqi propaganda; we're reporting as an independent news organization.

BOB GARFIELD: Back in '91 CNN and Peter Arnett in particular were heavily criticized, mostly by civilians, for reporting from within Baghdad during the U.S. attack in ways that they'd consider to be utter propaganda and to-- out of context and not reflecting the overall reality of Saddam Hussein' regime. Have you analyzed what you can get access to without appearing to be just a propaganda tool for Saddam?

EASON JORDAN: Well absolutely. I mean we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there; but we do think that some light is better than no light whatsoever. I think that the world, the American people will be shortchanged if foreign journalists are kicked out, because even in Peter Arnett's case there were things that he reported on -- and this is a long time ago now -- but things he reported on that I don't think would have been reported at all had he not been there. We feel committed to our Baghdad presence. We've had a bureau there for 12 years with occasional interruptions when we've been thrown out, but we're not there to please the Iraqi government -- we're not there to displease the Iraqi government -- we're just there to do our job.

BOB GARFIELD: Let's say there's an -- a second Gulf War. Is that the mother of all stories? Do you have to be there? Are there-- decisions you'll make on the margins to be s-- as certain as you possibly can that you will have a presence there?

EASON JORDAN: We'd very much like to be there if there's a second war; but-- we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an effort to make that happen, being mindful that in wartime there is censorship on all sides, and we're prepared to deal with a certain amount of censorship as long as it's not-- extreme, ridiculous censorship where -- which we've actually seen a number of cases in previous conflicts -- not just with Iraq. But-- sure! We want to be there, but it's --we don't want to be there come hell or high water. We want to be there if we can be there and operate as a responsible news organization.

BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Eason Jordan, thank you very much.

EASON JORDAN: Okay, thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Eason Jordan is the chief news executive and news-gathering president for CNN News Group. He joined us from CNN studios in Atlanta. [MUSIC]

[Sarge]

Reporting this type of information would have been no different than reporting the exact location and activities of our troops. It would have endagered their lives and their mission. Sometimes discretion has to be used both for the safety of your contacts as well as for your ability to be able to gather news in the future.

Moral equivilancy has you confused. Our troops don't run torture chambers or shoot people for the fun of it. You can bet your a$$ that if we did, CNN would be right there reporting it, whether it was true or not, quite like Peter Arnett did a few years back. When it comes right down to it, this guy has no scruples or morals except to stay in bagdad to keep CNN's ratings up. And hey, if I don't report a few human rights violations that the left claims to be so concerned about, well, that's cool. What a piece of sh!t. If he had reported what he saw a few years back, maybe the UN would have gotten off their worthless a$$es and done something. But somehow, I doubt it.

[Ignatius J.]

Air Sarge,

with the utmost of respect, I think you have slightly confused what this article is about. CNN failed to report these things because the sources were innocent civilians. If the CNN had reported the news it would have been traceable back to the civilian's families and they would have been murdered. They aren't talking about saving the lives of the people running the torture chambers, they're talking about keeping people out of them.

CNN deserves a fair amount of scorn, but I think that this is undue given the circumstances. They were just trying to do the right thing and I agree with them.

-DB

[The Sisko]

My point exactly DB. I was trying to point out that newscasters are expected NOT to report news which might endanger the lives and mission of our troops. Likewise, Jordan couldn't report on the stories mentioned because that would have endangered the lives of innocent Iraqi citizens.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't sleep well reporting something that I knew would get my sources and/or their families killed. Also, the reporting of these facts would have done nothing to change anything as AirSarge has already pointed out.

It's not moral equivalency. It's the right thing to do. Period.

[Sarge]

Sorry fellas, I'm not a bit confused. This "reporter" sat on this story 12 years. Maybe the first few times he saw some of this stuff he could have concluded that this kind of behavior on the part of the iraqi's was not going to change, packed his bags and left. Then he could have waited 2-3 years to protect his sources, or used "un-named sources" or whatever to get the word out. Instead he kept going back over a dozen years, reporting only what the Iraqi's would let him report. In essence, he was no better than state run TV in bagdad. And one has to wonder...if the regieme never fell, how long would CNN have been willing to keep this type of behavior covered up to keep their bureau open? They turned a blind eye to nasty things that were going on, and now try to take the high road of saving the lives of iraqi newsmen. Seems more like a good excuse to use to keep from getting completely hammered on this subject. Truth is, they wanted to have a bureau in bagdad, and if they had to keep some things quite, so be it. Like I siad in my last post, maybe if some of this stuff got out, even clinton would have summed uip the courage to go in and change things. But somehow, I doubt it. As for CNN, I have come to expect no less from them. Way to go fellas.

[redman]

That interview transcript with Eason Jordan dating back to October of last year is pretty damning. He's saying the opposite in many cases of what he admitted to this last year. Here's an article detailing more of the fallout:

CNN takes heat for action, inaction

Mon Apr 14,12:39 PM ET Add Top Stories - USA TODAY to My Yahoo!

Peter Johnson USA TODAY

CNN came under attack Sunday on two fronts.

An admission by CNN's chief news executive that he kept quiet for years about government atrocities in Iraq (news - web sites) -- including those against his own journalists -- raised questions about whether CNN committed an ethical transgression: trading silence for access.

And a French media watchdog group says CNN is setting a ''dangerous precedent'' by having a team in Iraq traveling with an armed guard.

Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) made the comments after an incident in the northern Iraqi town of Tikrit in which a security guard with CNN's Brent Sadler fired his machine gun at a checkpoint when the convoy came under gunfire.

Media groups generally stay away from hiring armed guards, saying it can increase confusion. But because Iraq is so particularly dangerous, ''you do what you have to do to protect your people,'' CNN spokesman Matthew Furman says.

In The New York Times Friday, Eason Jordan wrote that CNN never reported that an Iraqi cameraman working for CNN was tortured because it ''would have almost certainly have gotten him killed and put him or his family and co-workers at grave risk.''

He also wrote that he never reported that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s eldest son, Uday, had told him in 1995 that he planned to kill two of his brothers-in-law who had defected as well as the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. ''I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting,'' Jordan wrote. (He did tell King Hussein, who ignored it, and a few months later Uday ''lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.'')

''I'm disturbed by (Jordan's actions). It really took the wind out of me,'' Bill Kovach, head of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, said Sunday. ''There were probably strategic business decisions about CNN's relationship with the government, but this seems to me to be allowing the ethics of other endeavors to trump the ethics of journalism: to seek the truth and make it available.''

In Saturday's New York Post, columnist Eric Fettmann wrote: ''It's like saying that the best interests of journalism would have justified suppressing stories on the Holocaust in order to keep a U.S. news bureau in Berlin to tell Nazi Germany's side.''

In his own defense, CNN's Jordan said Sunday, ''I am at peace with myself knowing that I did the right thing and not put the lives of innocent people at risk.''

To anyone who accuses CNN of going soft on the Iraqi government now in tatters, Jordan said: ''No one was kicked out of Iraq more than CNN was. We got thrown out again and again for our tough reporting.''

Harvard media analyst Alex Jones said Sunday that he sympathized with what Jordan went through because dealing with foreign governments -- or dictatorships -- is not easy for any news outfit. ''Protecting your people always has to be the prime consideration.''

Good journalism always has ''tension between judgment and integrity,'' Jones said, and is a ''very hard thing'' for anyone not in Jordan's shoes to ''pass judgment on.''

The bottom line here is, as Air Sarge said, you don't repeatedly put yourself in a position as a journalist that forces you to compromise your integrity unless access is more important than veracity. CNN clearly traded one for the other.

And Jordan's claim that "we've been kicked out of Baghdad more than anyone else" rings pretty hollow too when you consider that you have to be there in the first place in order to get kicked out. Al Jazeera was kicked out too a couple of weeks ago.

[NavyDave]

Sorry that doesnt fly.

There have been plenty of civillian executions in Iraq over the past 12 years and the idea that they couldnt just leave and inform the world is ridiculous especially when their spin on Israel was more often than not negative.

Now imagine if Fox News was around for 12 years and had sources in Iraq and had this info.

Well for one thing this would have put the ball in slick willies court but more than likely he would have not proceeded because of the relationships he had with France and other liberal european leaders.