Paul Boutin

I realize I’m going to lose the Most Cynical Blogger contest over this , but I was honestly speechless over CNN exec Eason Jordan’s admission last week that the network had buried stories of atrocities in Iraq for 13 years. Separating the man from the company, I believe Jordan was worried for his employees rather than his access, and that he’s been wracked by guilt over the issue. But despite the work that must have gone into writing it, his claim that the network stayed silent out of fear for the lives of its sources rings false.

Contrast with this firsthand recounting from former CNN reporter Peter Collins:

Brent Sadler had been pushing for the interview with Saddam and had urged Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jordan to come to Baghdad to help seal the deal. “Petah,” he said to me in his English accent, “you know we’re trying to get an interview with Saddam. That piece last night was not helpful.”

Don’t miss the part where Collins is given an item-by-item rehash of the Minister of Information’s talking points to read on the air, instead of his own take on what’s news or not. It’s a publicist’s dream to have a respected TV reporter repeat your talking points unchallenged.

Whatever biases CNN was accused of at the time, a pro-Hussein bias was never one of them. Instead, millions of viewers took it on faith that CNN’s reporting was, if anything, skewed toward the poltical agendas of Washington and Wall Street, not Baghdad. Try it yourself: See if you can find a claim online that CNN was a tool of President Saddam Hussein (as they were required to call him) prior to last week.

I know why the situation bothers me. In Eason Jordan’s shoes at CNN, I’m not sure what I would have done. But the right thing would have been to pull up stakes and report the news as they saw it, from somewhere else. Or to stop altogether, which would have been a signal for most of us. Maybe that’s why I’m a writer instead of an editor or a producer - I can always walk away from the story if I think it’s phony. (Nah, I’m a writer because it’s all about me.)

But enough about me. The question we should be asking is: What other news agencies are doing the same thing right now?

Dan Kennedy at the Boston Phoenix has published a long email from Eason Jordan, plus a link to one of the better defenses of CNN’s actions.