33 replies to this topic

[Kimmer]

http://www.nytimes.c...1c&ei=5062

Quote

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.

I honestly don't know how this man looks at himself in the mirror every morning. Comments?

[Bad Wolf]

Wow!

I don't know which is worse, his failure to disclose then, or his attempt to capitalize on it now.

Where's that gag gif?

edited:  

Thanks Rov.

Lil

Edited by Una Salus Lillius, 12 April 2003 - 01:49 AM.

[QuiGon John]

My goodness, that is an eye-opener...

Are we sure this guy is telling the truth?  It almost seems hard to believe....

[JadziaDax]

And this would be why I don't watch the news.

[jon3831]

Una Salus Lillius, on Apr 11 2003, 02:10 PM, said:

I don't know which is worse, his failure to disclose then, or his attempt to capitalize on it now.

Where's that gag gif?

Amen.

Do we have a puking smiley?

[Rov Judicata]

It's barf, with colons. Learn it, know it, love it.

Oh, and... John, I'm not sure this is hard to believe.

If I'm reading this right, they kept the story of their cameraman being abused so they wouldn't get kicked out of Iraq. Gotta get the story...

[StarGazer]

Nothing about the news/TV/papers surprises me, nothing.

[Anakam]

  

Uhh... yeah.  

I'll come smash his mirror for him so it won't be an issue anymore....

[Kimmer]

It smacks of "CYA" at this point - at least to me.

This kind of stuff just reaffirms to me why I take the "news" with a grain of salt, read several sources and make an attempt at an "educated guess".

This smiley a friend sent me in an email and I stuck it up on my web site (probably came from one of the smiley sites - I dunno). If you want to use it ... download it and put it on your own site. I don't have enough bandwidth to handle everyone, sorry.

[Kelela]

http://www.cnn.com/2...plot/index.html

Here's the story as well, some of the "facts" match the NYTimes.

Kelela

If link doesn't work, the story can be found CNN.com.us

[the 'Hawk]

I really don't understand why the big deal.

This kind of thing is standard fare for a repressive regime. Hell, that's lightweight stuff-- I suspect that he's kept the really hardcore sh*t off the NY Times column page.

I just don't get why this is viewed as 'opportunism'. All of what he's saying fits the bill. I can see how it can be perceived as 'yellow journalism', slanted after the fact, "now my tale is told" kind of stuff.

But how desensitized are you if you look at this and go, "he's lying, he's spinning, he's slanting, etc."?

I see no reason not to take him at his word. This stuff is pretty tame as far as torture and oppression tales go-- not to say that I somehow specialize in this sort of thing, or that I get off on this sort of story. I've studied the Holocaust, various regimes in South America where 'disappeared' people were a common occurrence, and the like.

I just don't see why folks are reacting to this like it's a big deal. They knew he was bad-guy material before they blew up his house. It follows that he did bad stuff--- or more specifically, that other people did bad stuff so they could tell him what he wanted to hear.

Further to that, I find the loyalty to their reporters etc. in Baghdad to be both unexpected and understandable. If you don't want someone to know what you're up to, the first thing you do is leave them in the dark. That means journalists become targets for the regime. This isn't anything new, either. If you don't want someone to see what you're doing, shut the lights, blind them, or poke out their eyes.

Anyway. Just curious.

[Uncle Sid]

Quote

I really don't understand why the big deal.

This kind of thing is standard fare for a repressive regime. Hell, that's lightweight stuff-- I suspect that he's kept the really hardcore sh*t off the NY Times column page.

I just don't get why this is viewed as 'opportunism'. All of what he's saying fits the bill. I can see how it can be perceived as 'yellow journalism', slanted after the fact, "now my tale is told" kind of stuff.

Agreed for the most part.

The fact is that everybody knew Saddam was a bad guy and that the things that were described in the Times are just par for the course.  We just didn't know the specific details is all.  But on more than one occasion, even from CNN I think, you could get reports of people telling us what sorts of things happened in Iraq, albeit watered down ones.  

I hope that no one assumed that the free press would be tolerated in Iraq.  At the very least, I expected the press to be skillfully manipulated by the Iraqis, although it seems that the regime there took more active and direct means to secure the silence of certain news outlets there.  

I think this guy has just been pissed at Iraq for a long time and now he's getting his revenge by making this admission and nailing shut any argument that Saddam was anything but a dictator in charge of a brutish, repressive regime.  I don't think it's yellow journalism in the sense that the writer wanted the war to happen and is now justifying it.  I think it's more like: "well whether it was done correctly or not, Saddam is gone now, and I'm just so damn happy about it."  It shouldn't be called "yellow" simply because the timing seems like he's hitching onto the bandwagon, because I don't think that's his angle.  I think just about everyone, pro-war and anti-war alike hates Saddam's guts.  I think 99% of the anti-war protesters would be just fine with Saddam meeting a bad end, as long as it didn't take the course that it did with the war and everything.  So, you don't have to be a yellow journalist to be anti-Saddam in this regard.

[G1223]

Well  I just want to know. This man had this info yet he did not even at least brief his anchors as to what they might find out.  He did not they to stop his network from acting at times as a conduit for Saddam's propagandy.


This is why more conservative people turned away from CNN, Becasue we have felt  they are not "Noble" reporters like of Morrow or Cronkite but simply the  people with their own agenda.

[Neptunian]

^^ Actually, they may have been doing the people in question a favour. It's no big secret that, when asked by the foreign press if they're afraid of Saddam, the Iraqis wouldn't reply. I believe it was a health issue at stake.

[Kosh]

Quote

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 think I might have warned the Brothers-in-law while I was at it. The King of Jordan had less to worry about, the BIL didn't have a chance.









   <Probably doesn't sleep well.

[RommieSG]

And this is why I watch MSNBC predominantly.

Rommie

[Shalamar]

I do not doubt that every journalist, and every news group over there has similar stories that they have swallows an kept silent on...like Neptunian said..it's a health issue...

Not for the journalist who can head for the safety of the western world but for the poor souls who have had to live there, in a country that imprissions childre, tortures casually, rapes with impunity, dissappears people as an everyday thing...

Iwould have born the horror on my soul to spare other's lives...;what are my pain and nightmares in comparrison to their lives...

and what a relief to finally be able to speak out

[Kimmer]

It is rapidly becoming apparent that many, many people/organizations knew all to well exactly what was occurring in Iraq. Shame on all of them for failing to speak up.

While I do understand the desire to protect your own reporters, etc., there comes a point in life where you must decide for yourself where your morals and ethics lie, and when you must take a stand. Sometimes you have to - no, NEED to and MUST speak up, no matter the cost, in order to do what is morally right.

I find this man's action deplorable.

[the 'Hawk]

^ But why? He doesn't have any moral obligation to tell the truth of what's going on--------

Wait a minute. He's a journalist. Of course he does.

Now I see your point.

[Kimmer]

LOL @ Hawk's comments.

////////////// Hawk