The liberation of CNN.
This evening, CNN broadcast a report, and an interview with CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan, about how the Saddam Hussein regime planned to carry out a terrorist attack on the CNN compound in Irbil, in northern Iraq, and made other terroristic threats against Western journalists. The regime believed that CNN was being used as a cover for American and Israeli intelligence. CNN anchor Aaron Brown stated that only now, with the regime fallen, does CNN feel that they can tell the story without jeopardizing the safety of their employees and others. Iraqi agents were working to use one ton of explosives to blow up CNN’s operations center in Irbil. Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s unintentionally humorous Information Minister, threatened CNN’s employees with death if they placed reporters in northern Iraq. “Baghdad Bob” had a secret dark side.
Furthermore, after Nic Robertson and CNN’s other staff were ordered to leave Baghdad by the regime while war raged in the countryside, all other Western media outlets, including the Associated Press, for example, were warned that if their reporters were ever interviewed or their video shown on CNN, their own reporters would be imprisoned. CNN scrupulously avoided using work that would endanger fellow journalists.
There is no rational reason to believe that CNN has or had anything to do with any intelligence agency.
It may sound like just one more strike against the Saddam regime, but this—using terrorism against journalists—will stand out in the annals of history as particularly diabolical and outrageous.
This increases my respect for CNN and its employees. More than others, they risked their lives just to report the news. Congratulations to them on what can only be described as their liberation. While it is a smaller event than the liberation of the country of Iraq, it is significant nonetheless.
In the New York Times, Eason Jordan gives his account of atrocities that go even further than detailed above. CNN’s Iraqi employees were tortured, for example. (*)
Update: 11 April 2003. CNN now has coverage on their web site. (†)
Update: 11 April 2003. Chris Lawrence has more, and some reactions. (‡) Some people, as he notes, have said that CNN compromised their reporting for the sake of staying in Iraq. That’s nonsense. CNN could not have rescued all of their Iraqi employees and all of their family members and distant relations. CNN did not report these acts of torture until now, but that is excusable. CNN was reporting the human rights abuses of the Iraqi regime for years. The fact that they couldn’t mention a few specific names should come as no surprise. A number of right-wingers online are shocked, shocked that CNN did this. Apparently, those right-wingers simply weren’t paying attention to the years of Iraq’s human rights abuses or the years of CNN’s coverage of them until the past few weeks.
Update: 11 April 2003. Many old reports, including two from 1998, about the Saddam regime and torture can be found at CNN’s web site. (§) (**) Therefore, the charge that CNN buried the facts of the Iraqi regime’s atrocities is baseless.
Update: 12 April 2003. In an interview with the Washington Times (††), Eason Jordan makes the same point that I’ve been making: CNN was already covering the regime’s record of brutality, therefore the need to save lives outweighed the need to immediately report these particular examples of the regime’s brutality.
Update: 12 April 2003.Kathy Kinsley has now decided that she can no longer trust reporters who are based in a tyrannized country. (‡‡) As if our innocence has now been shattered. It’s never been wise to trust reporters in any bureau, tyrannized or not. No matter what country you are reporting from, you are always giving out some kind of biased information. Why are people shocked by this? Seriously. Do you think Fox News’s Israel bureau is going to give us a completely objective account of the Middle East situation? Do you think CNN India and CNN Pakistan will come up with the same reports? No. They will both try to come up with the truth, which would be the same if they could achieve that high standard. If you want to follow the news, you have to be suspicious of all reports that you hear. Archpundit is harsh, but right. (§§)
Update: 14 April 2003. CNN is now denying that they suppressed the stories in order to maintain access in Iraq. (***) It’s sad that they had to state the obvious, but they have received a lot of baseless carping since telling the story of how they were victimized. It’s the usual “blame the victim” approach. What most critics seem to think is that CNN had many Iraqi employees who were tortured, and continued to have such employees for years. CNN has said only that they had one such incident in the mid-1990s. After that, presumably, they stopped employing Iraqi nationals to work inside of CNN, and used only foreign nationals.
Update: 15 April 2003. The Washington Post publishes details of an internal staff memo sent by Eason Jordan. (††) He makes the same arguments I’ve been making. Additionally, he says, the fact that CNN was forcibly kicked out of Iraq six times, more than other news organizations, shows that the Iraqi regime did not regard CNN as their friendly propaganda organ; it shows they regarded CNN as just the opposite.
Update: 18 April 2003. Peter Collins writes about bad things that CNN did while he was there for a short time. (‡‡‡) He was bothered with CNN’s bias toward Iraq. The question of such a bias needs to be examined in the context of their recent statements. That said, my position is that not running certain stories was justified by their concern for saving lives. I also think that CNN was tough on the Saddam Hussein regime. Perhaps, though, they weren’t tough enough. Perhaps they could have done more from outside Iraq to bring attention to human rights concerns inside Iraq. That’s another debate.
Update: 23 April 2003. Matthew Hoy of Hoystory comments. (§§§)
April 11th, 2003 at 14:53
I’m sorry, but I feel quite the opposite. Personally, I am appalled. What was this man thinking? In the name of trying to provide "objective news coverage" from Iraq, he willingly sacrificed the safety and lives of those who worked for him. This man put his greedy desire to have his network’s own bureau in Baghdad above all else, including the torture of his cameraman, among many others!
Mr. Jordan had a higher moral responsibility to immediately close the Baghdad office and pull his staff out of Iraq. He also had the professional journalistic responsibility to report what was done to his staff so that the world could see what a horrible regime was in charge in Iraq.
April 11th, 2003 at 15:25
CNN didn’t force those people to work for them. Their Iraqi employees chose to work for CNN. The real crime was committed by the Iraqi regime, not CNN.
If CNN just pulled out of Baghdad, all of their Iraqi employees and family members would have likely been tortured or killed.
April 11th, 2003 at 16:29
Andrew, to be honest I am torn about this. Staying seemed the thing to do, but I just think there was a higher moral responsibility. I agree that the Iraqi employees chose to work for CNN, but surely they did not choose to be tortured! If Mr. Jordan knew this was happening, why did he do nothing to stop this?
If an abused wife left a violent husband but did not take her children, the husband may have hurt the kids. Could the wife have taken the children with her? Perhaps. On a similar note, if the wife knew that her husband was raping their young children, should she have done everything she could to remove the children from the house, and notify the authorities? In this case, it appears that the wife may have chosen to remain a silent — and thereby complicit — party to the egregious acts, so that the husband could continue to provide food and shelter for the family.
Mmmm… no easy answers, but in the end, I still think he had a higher moral obligation to do something.
April 11th, 2003 at 23:53
Different but similar: I work for a software company that continued to do business and maintain an office during the “embargo” of South Africa. It was commented by many “how can you support Apartheid???”
Well, far from supporting it we were one of the few companies that employed native Africans and used he services of the same outside of the company - both on an equal basis. If we withdrew as they wished we’d not only hurt our bottom line [insignificant impact in the short term of the embargo], but we’d also ruin the lifeline of hope for many we directly or indirectly employed. But those who opposed Apartheid in the outside countries still couldn’t see past that simple fact; thinking us monsters… I’m still confused by their view to this day.
CNN was in a tough position. Not saying they did or did not make the right decisions… but it was not an obvious or easy answer for them.
April 12th, 2003 at 16:21
Let’s not forget that CNN was not the only foreign news organization that had a permanent presence in Baghdad. The AP, Reuters, the BBC, and others did so, too. Currently, we are aware that the Iraqi regime used terrorism against CNN. We are not aware that the Iraqi regime used terrorism against other foreign news organizations. CNN was perhaps singled out for victimization.
CNN had the right to expect they would not face terrorism in Baghdad. Thus, they had a right to establish a permanent presence there. Later, the Iraqi regime tortured some of CNN’s Iraqi employees. If CNN had broadcast a report of that—regardless of whether CNN still had a presence in Iraq—those men and their family members would likely have been further tortured and then killed. There is no reason to believe that CNN could possibly have rescued all of them and all of their family members.
Thus, it was necessary to temporarily withhold these stories in order to save lives. It’s not as if CNN was not telling anyone about Iraq’s record of brutality. They were.
Sure, CNN could not broadcast such a report by one of their reporters located in Baghdad. But they could broadcast such a report by one of their reporters located in another country, such as the US.
Some people apparently believe that we should not have journalists in any country except for those with a free press. That doesn’t make sense. It’s better to send journalists there so they can get stories. That is how information embarrassing to criminal regime’s like Saddam’s gets out. Someone goes in, then leaves, then tells the story. The fact that CNN left reporters inside Baghdad did not hinder their ability to report. It enhanced it.
Lani T, your comments are well put. I agree that Eason Jordan should have done all he could to protect his employees. I don’t think he could have done much more than he did, however. I imagine that once the torture of CNN’s Iraqi employees became known to him, he stopped CNN from employming any more Iraqis.
I don’t think this is like the abused mother example. In this case, if CNN stayed and broadcast the report, or left and broadcast the report, the result would be the same. It’s not as if the torture of CNN employees would have kickstarted the war sooner. On the other hand, leaving provided no benefit to either CNN or their tortured employees. If CNN left and did not broadcast the report, they would be in a worse position than if they stayed and did not broadcast it. If CNN left and did broadcast it, however, their employees and their families in Iraq could be killed. In the abused mother example, by leaving the abuser, she is able to take steps to protect herself and eventually the kids. In CNN’s case, leaving would not have enabled them to protect their employees any more than they could by staying.
Ian K, that’s an interesting point on apartheid. I’m not sure I’d agree with it, but I see what you’re saying, and it makes me think.
I’d have to draw a distinction in this case between a news organization and a regular for-profit enterprise. Both provide a public service, but that of the news organization may be more needed in a tyrannized country like South Africa under apartheid or Iraq under Saddam.
April 14th, 2003 at 13:06
If there was a threat to Iraqi employees, the answer was to close the bureau and get everyone out. How was it more "humane" to have his employees terrorized?
The only logical conclusion is that CNN wanted to stay in Iraq for its own purposes and was willing to keep the regime happy in order to do so. How else does one explain the freedom Saddam’s son felt to tell Jordan of his plans for murder?
How did CNN get the truth out about the regime? The answer is that it didn’t. Wasn’t it germane to the UN debate and the debate in this country to be able to validate the rumors of atrocities which in the media were usually enclosed in quotation marks as if these statements were unsubstantiated?
Using your analogy, news organizations should have tried to stay in Berlin during World War II but not speak of the Holocaust.
If the truth is the most important thing rather than the competitive advantage of a network, then CNN should have resolved to get its people out and close its bureau and report from the outside. If it were really in fear for the lives of its people, how can we be assured that it was not required to post Pro-Saddam reporting?
By the way, who do we have to verify Jordan’s claims of threats to his employees if CNN left? What was to keep them from going to the Anti-Saddam forces operating in both the South and the North of Iraq. With the admission that they selectively reported the news, how can we decide what is and is not being reported?
April 14th, 2003 at 14:29
pure hogwash.. this was a coverup for the sake of shame.. it doesnt surprise me..
April 14th, 2003 at 15:01
CNN reasonably believed that if they would have reported on the tortured employee, all the family members of those employees would have been tortured and killed. The same would have occurred if CNN remained in Baghdad or not.
Journalism is guided not merely by reporting the truth; but also by minimizing harm.
For anyone who still believes that CNN was in the wrong, I challenge you to spell out a scenario where CNN could have done more to protect its employees than they did.
This is not like your foreign reporter in Nazi Germany example. Here, CNN did report on the Iraqi regime’s common practice of torture.
April 14th, 2003 at 16:54
One question is whether CNN did everything it could to protect its employees, Iraqi or not. Another is whether its decision to stay in Baghdad, with the continued risk to its employees, was driven by the desire to do good journalism rather than the desire for audience share and subsequent profit. Am I the only one who finds it odd to see a large profitmaking corporation defended the way it’s beind defended here?
April 14th, 2003 at 17:05
I first heard about this last night, when my dittohead father-in-law gave me the right wing spin. After reading the actual NY Times piece, I’m inclined to sympathise with the position the bureau chief was in, though it’s messy no matter how you slice it.