Wednesday, December 10, 2003

CNN = Nonsense

Thank you for the publishing [Dec. 3] the letter from Randy Gaddo, Peachtree City director of leisure services, regarding his own wartime experiences with liberal bias at CNN.

The Ted Turner network, like its founder, has a checkered history of bias and malfeasance.

In an April 11 revelation on the New York Times editorial page, Eason Jordan, CNN chief news executive, revealed that CNN had kept its Baghdad bureau open, even after some of their Iraqi employees had been arrested and tortured; and the information minister had threatened to assassinate reporters if they went to Northern Iraq.

Peter Collins, former CNN reporter in Baghdad, followed up in the April 15 Washington Times, stating that CNN had told him to report verbatim a text from the Iraqi Ministry of Information, and was then criticized for not delivering the report with enough enthusiasm.

Everyone should know by now that a free-world news service is not allowed to operate in a totalitarian country if it tells the unvarnished truth. That is why Iraqi “minders” were present at anytime a CNN correspondent left his hotel, and why so many Iraqis who “loved Saddam” could be found on Baghdad’s streets.

Anne Gerrels of NPR even admitted on April 9 of being “shaken down” by minders to gain exit from the press compound. (Irony, taxpayers?)

So, it should not be a shock to learn that a study by the Media Research Center (MRC) finds that CNN, who is “allowed” a Havana bureau in Cuba, is a “propaganda tool for Fidel Castro’s government” and a “megaphone for a dictator.”

Those of us who remember Peter Arnett reporting from a destroyed Baghdad biological weapons plant, in front of a sign reading “Baby Milk Factory,” while mouthing the words approved by an Iraqi censor, shouldn’t be too terribly shaken by these findings.

It is also interesting that Peter Collins returned to this site in 1993 to find the facility greatly expanded, but off-limits to the press. Why conceal the making of baby milk?

Correspondingly, the MRC studied all the CNN coverage from Cuba since the bureau was opened six years ago, and found it failed to offer fair and balanced coverage of the island dictatorship. The Center studied 212 news reports and found that CNN gave “six times more air play” to Castro or communist spokesmen than to non-communists such as Catholic leaders or dissidents.

“This left American audiences with the impression that Castro’s government is overwhelmingly popular among the Cuban public,” the study said. The MRC also claims that CNN covers Castro as a “celebrity rather than a tyrant” and shows Cuba as a charming country rather than one “held in the grip of a dictatorship.”

CNN reported from Soviet Russia in the 1980s about the strong environmental efforts of the compassionate Communist Party that were showcased from “pristine” locations where fish and foul abounded. Now we know that Russia is more like a sewer, and that the party never let environmental concerns stand in the way of industrial growth or military exigencies.

The MRC recommends that CNN increase its investigative journalism in Cuba, report on the welfare of political prisoners, and update the status of Cuba’s independent journalists.

Another critic is the Florida-based pro-democracy group Cuba Libertad, which wrote a May 9 letter to the CNN chairman accusing the network of becoming “just another tool of Castro’s propaganda machine,” according to Jennifer Harper in the May 11, 2002, Washington Times.

Cuba Libertad’s President writes that “CNN has failed to live up to its stated commitment to provide comprehensive, fair and balanced reporting in Cuba ....”

And where is CNN with the April 2003 Castro crackdown on dissidents? CNN’s reliance on Clintonistas in all areas of expertise was displayed with the advent of Operation Iraqi Freedom. CNN viewers were treated to analysis by General Wesley Clark who was Clinton’s NATO commander, and now a Democrat candidate who has Clinton’s backing and the services of his 24/7 war room and propaganda factory.

Clark was quick to wrongly disparage the Iraqi operation, probably with a mind to enhancing his own presidential ambitions.

By groveling to tyrants, CNN has lost all credibility. By blacking out news of Saddam’s treachery, CNN now reveals it has no shame. In addition to Clark’s services, that’s one more thing CNN shares with Clinton.

William Fielder

Peachtree City, Ga.