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CNN Attempts to Influence Coverage of War
WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the offensive on Afghanistan nears the one-month mark, U.S. journalists are debating their role in the "war on terrorism", news agencies reported Saturday.
This debate was highlighted after the Washington Post published a memo Wednesday issued by the president of Cable News Network (CNN), Walter Isaacson, urging staff to guard against presenting too much of the Taliban's point of view now that the Taliban have begun letting a few foreign journalists into Afghanistan under tight surveillance, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
After airing footage from Afghanistan, especially scenes of destruction wrought by U.S. bombs missing their targets, CNN journalists should "talk about how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people" in September 11th attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Isaacson's memo said.
Isaacson said it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan," said the
Washington Post.
In a memo to international correspondents, Isaacson said: "As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people."
"As more errant U.S. bombs have landed in residential areas, causing damage to such places as a Red Cross warehouse and senior citizens' center, the resulting television images have fueled criticism of the American war effort.
"This has sparked a growing debate, which began with the Osama bin Laden videotape, about how the media should handle stage-managed pictures from Afghanistan," the paper said.
During the Gulf War ten years ago, "we realized we were used as a conduit, but decided to stay," said Peter Arnett, a CNN correspondent at the time, and the only television journalist allowed to stay in Baghdad after a U.S.-led coalition began bombing it.
Pressure on the media by then-president George Bush, the elder, "was very strong," Arnett recalled.
"Their fear was that having a credible news organization in Baghdad would undermine the war effort."
The Post said: "In a second memo, Rick Davis, CNN's head of standards and practices, said it "may be hard for the correspondent in these dangerous areas to make the points clearly," so he suggested language for the anchors:
"'We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this from Taliban-controlled areas, that these U.S. military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.' or,
"'We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this, that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan continues to harbor terrorists who have praised the September 11 attacks that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.,' or,
"'The Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, even as the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the U.S.' . . .
"Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time," he said.
After U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asked U.S. network news chiefs not to show bin Laden videotapes live and unedited, MSNBC and Fox News did not air the next one and CNN showed only brief excerpts, said the paper.
Jim Murphy, executive producer of the "CBS Evening News," said of the CNN instructions: "I wouldn't order anybody to do anything like that. Our reporters are smart enough to know it always has to be put in context."
NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley took a similar tack, saying: "I'd give the American public more credit, frankly. I'm not sure it makes sense to say every single time you see any pictures from Afghanistan, "This is as a result of September 11th. No one's made any secret of that."
But Fox News Vice President John Moody said the CNN directive is "not at all a bad thing" because "Americans need to remember what started this. . . . I think people need a certain amount of context or they obsess on the last 15 minutes of history. A lot of Americans did die."
Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism said: "It sounds as though they're worried about people being mad at them more than about providing the information that is useful."
CNN has previously tried to influence its reporters in their coverage of events.
Earlier in September, the American broadcasting mogul followed the footsteps of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and instructed its journalists to stop referring to Gilo as a "Jewish settlement" and replace it with "Jewish neighborhood", reported U.K. daily
The Independent.
"Arabs have long protested over CNN's reporting of the Middle East especially its pejorative use of the word 'terrorist' but they are likely to be outraged by this latest softening of the station's reporting in Israel's favor.
"Some of the land on which Gilo is built was taken from the Palestinians of Beit Jala Gilo is Hebrew for Jala but no hint of this historical background will be permitted on CNN," said
The Independent.
The instruction from CNN's headquarters in Atlanta was straightforward, the memorandum saying, "We refer to Gilo as a Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, built on land occupied by Israel in 1967. We don't refer to it as a settlement."
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