No Blood For Ratings: CNN - the Collaborator’s News Network

No Blood For Ratings: CNN - the Collaborator’s News Network
by Jennifer King, Managing Editor

April 28, 2003

"The Heretical Housewife"

Managing Editor Jennifer King It’s a stunning story, and one which has not received nearly the amount of media attention that it deserves. On 11 April, Mr. Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive for CNN, penned an insincere mea culpa for The New York Times. The piece, entitled, “The News We Kept to Ourselves”, detailed stories of immense horror - horror which Mr. Jordan had been privy to, but had declined to report upon, supposedly because he feared that his staff would be at jeopardy should Saddam’s criminal regime be exposed.

Unfortunately for Mr. Jordan, inconvenient facts interceded with his supposedly humanitarian goals. Mr. Jordan discusses the story of a CNN cameraman, who was kidnapped, beaten and tortured repeatedly over two months. This outrageous act of brutality by Saddam’s thugs was deemed un-newsworthy by Mr. Jordan, who was no doubt simply looking after the safety of his staff. Mr. Jordan also recounts the tragic tale of a Kuwaiti woman, one Asrar Qabandi, who - for the alleged crime of “talking” with CNN - was beaten daily for two months - in front of her father, who was forced to watch. In January of 1991, Ms. Oabansi’s skull was crushed, her body was torn into pieces and said pieces were delivered to her family’s doorstep in a plastic bag. Mr. Jordan, despite his alleged contrition, simply couldn’t bring himself to expose this horrific and deliberate murder either, until now.

Mr. Jordan could have chosen to expose Saddam’s Nazi-like regime. He could have moved his news bureau, whose welfare so concerned him, out of Iraq entirely. He could have saved innumerable Iraqi lives and saved innumerable Iraqi families the personal tragedies they endured over the twelve years Mr. Jordan was in Baghdad. Mr. Jordan chose not to. Mr. Jordan chose to keep his personnel at risk. Mr. Jordan made the choice to go with “puff” pieces, such as the recent glowing coverage of Saddam Hussein’s “100% vote victory” and “Saddam’s Birthday” instead of revealing what he knew to be the truth about this horrendous regime and its’ atrocities against the Iraqi people.

During a subsequent C-SPAN interview, Mr. Jordan was sanguine about his choices. Exhibiting the true hubris of the elite media class, Mr. Jordan was “sure” he had acted in the proper manner. Of course. In their view, the media knows best. Just ask Walter Cronkite, who recently lamented the transfer of power from the “editorial newsroom” to the hoi polloi. It really is a burr under their collective saddle, that they can no longer suppress the news which they deem the little people shouldn’t know.

The Fourth Estate has a responsibility to the American people. This responsibility is enshrined in our Constitution. American newspapers used to be privately owned, and many owners were not shy about expressing their personal point of view. Witness papers with the moniker, “Republican, or Democrat” in their header. When major media began to buy out the hometown papers, they began to hide under the façade of “unbiased” journalism, which is a complete crock. All journalists are biased. The competent ones simply learn to leave their biases on the editorial page, where they belong.

When a Walter Cronkite, or an Eason Jordan, decide which news stories can be told truthfully to the American public, they are no longer journalists, they are propagandists. When they cover up torture and murder by regime in order to retain access they are no longer propagandists, they are collaborators. They taint all media by the assumption that other sources will, like themselves, blithely lie when it comes to telling the truth about savage dictators like Hussein, Castro, Kim Il Jong and others.

Mr. Jordan determined that CNN’s ratings, achieved first in the Gulf War when the cable channel had unprecedented access, would take leadership over reporting the truth about the evils of Hussein’s regime. Mr. Jordan chose unwisely, and his CYA editorial now is an apparent preemptive strike - launched solely in fear of what the Marine Expeditionary Forces might uncover in Baghdad about CNN’s Vichy reprise.

Mr. Jordan deserves nothing but contempt and derision from his alleged countrymen. He is nothing less than an abject coward and liar, worthy only of the results deriving from his Faustian bargain. Yet, today, Mr. Jordan is no doubt the toast of the elite media cocktail circuit, lauded for his “bravery” in coming clean with his legion of lies.

Back in the real world, it is CNN’s brutalized cameraman, Ms. Qabandi and millions of other tyrannized Iraqis - laboring under the 12-year yoke enabled by Mr. Jordan - who have paid the true price for CNN’s “blood for ratings.” ***

Photo of Jennifer King courtesy of staff files