PoliBlog: Poor CNN

September 15, 2024

Poor CNN

My question is: how?

CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN "was intimidated" by the Bush administration and Fox News, which "put a climate of fear and self-censorship."

As criticism of the war and its aftermath intensifies, Amanpour joins a chorus of journalists and pundits who charge that the media largely toed the Bush administrationline in covering the war and, by doing so, failed to aggressively question the motives behind the invasion.

And this strikes me as sour grapes over the fact that CNN is no longer the only cable news network--indeed, not even the top net:

Said Amanpour: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

I mean, what? The Fox guys were going to beat up the CNN guys with their bare fists if the CNN guys didn't report the story the way the Fox guys wanted? I mean, please.

And this from the network that admitted that they downplayed stories (indeed, often didn't cover them) about the horrors of Iraq because they didn't want Saddam to shut down their Baghdad bureau. I don't recall Christiane complaining about "intimidation" back then.

Source: Amanpour: CNN practiced self-censorship

Posted by Steven Taylor at September 15, 2024 08:33 AM | TrackBack

Comments

it does surprise me that the only place, it seemed, that one could read about iraq casualties was on english-language arab web sites. And those numbers were hard to validate.

In a war and especially afterwards, it seems reasonable that this information would be public knowledge, even if it wasn't headlines. In fact, i still haven't seen any numbers on how many iraqi's were killed & injured during the war.

Does this mean that our journalists self-censored? Don't know. just curious.

Posted by: eric at September 15, 2024 11:18 AM

Greetings,

I fear that this "news story" will turn into a shouting match between FOX and CNN -- which is exactly what FOX and CNN want-- fierce journalists sandwiched between the next Laci Peterson tragedy and John Ritter retropective. Oh, my.

Is the BBC the only broadcast without shoulder graphics that scream "ATTACK?"

Nathan Callahan

Posted by: Nathan Callahan at September 15, 2024 12:31 PM

Let's see what Steven missed in this story.

First, Amanpour was criticizing CNN--no sour grapes involved whatsoever. She's accurately stating her network didn't do their job.

Second, Scott ought to be concerned with censorship of the press. Instead, he is more concerned with touting Fox and defending Dubya. The plain fact is reporters were sent home for reporting on stories that didn't dutifully parrot the partyline.

Third, here's what a Fox spokesperson had to say in response to Amanpour's comments:

"Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

There you have it: spout the WH partyline or be labelled as traitorous. Note by saying this, the Fox spokesperson is also spreading the lie Iraq and Al Qaeda are the same.

Posted by: JadeGold at September 15, 2024 03:13 PM

CNN is really an odious little network, isn't it?

Is it true that Amanpour vowed to resolve the conflict by wrestling Rita Cosby in jello during Crossfire?

Posted by: Chuck at September 15, 2024 03:13 PM