Say Anything Blog

Interesting...

On CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday, CNN’s senior international correspondent Nic Robertson added all of the caveats and disclaimers that he should have included in his story last week that amounted to his giving an uncritical forum for the terrorist group Hezbollah to spout unverifiable anti-Israeli propaganda.

Back on July 18, Hezbollah took Robertson and his crew on a tour of a heavily damaged south Beirut neighborhood. The Hezbollah “press officer” even instructed the CNN camera: “Just look. Shoot. Look at this building. Is it a military base? Is it a military base, or just civilians living in this building?”

In his original story, Robertson had no complaints about the journalistic limitations of a story put together under such tight controls, and Robertson himself at one point seemed to agree with the Hezbollah propaganda claim that Israeli jets had targeted a civilian area: “As we run past the rubble, we see much that points to civilian life, no evidence apparent of military equipment.”

Challenged by Reliable Sources host (and Washington Post media writer) Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Robertson suggested Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There's no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”

But the closest Robertson came to making any of these points in the taped package that aired last week was admitting that “we [he and his CNN crew] didn’t go burrowing into all the houses,” after pointing out (for the second time) that “we didn’t see any military type of equipment” in the area Hezbollah chose to let them tour.

Read the whole thing.

The media's double standards never cease to amaze me.

When covering the Bush administration and stories like, say, the NSA "domestic wiretapping" situation the media is quick to point out that their role to hold the government accountable and to be skeptical of claims made by politicians. When it is pointed out that perhaps it is not a good idea for reporters to expose classified national security information against the wishes of our elected leaders these reporters defend themselves by painting self-serving pictures of brave journalists asking the tough questions and going to any length to bring Americans the truth.

Which is all well and good, I suppose, objections to the public disclosure of sensitive national security information aside. But why then don't our reporters bring that same sense of incredulity to their coverage America's enemies or, in this instance, the enemies of both America and America's allies?

Can you imagine any reporter in the White House press corps allowing Tony Snow to hand-hold them through a story like Hezbollah did Robertson as described above? Of course not. And even if the reporter did allow it you can be sure that Snow and the Bush administration would be blasted for the condescension to the fourth estate. Yet for whatever reason Hezbollah isn't held to that same standard.

This isn't an isolated incident either. In 2005 CNN news executive Eason Jordan resigned his position after it came to light that he had suppressed reporting of some of the worst atrocities comitted during Saddam Hussein's reign in Iraq. More recently claims of abuse from detainees at a U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay have been reported widely and without skepticism (the worst case of this being Newsweek's reporting about Korans allegedly being flushed down toilets, something that sparked riots across the middle east despite the fact that the allegations were patently false) despite the fact that many of the details of the alleged abuse come only from the detainees themselves or their lawyers.

Detainees, I'd add, who have been trained to make false accusations of abuse as part of a strategy for manipulating media coverage to their advantage.

I make no secret about my opinions regarding liberal media bias. I think it exists and that it is pervasive, but regardless of whether I'm right or wrong on that subject I think we should all agree that the media should be consistent when it comes to skepticism for the sources of their stories.

The overall quality of media coverage in this country would greatly improve if reporters applied to everything they cover (including claims and assertions made by terrorists and terrorist organizations) the same level of skepticism and adversity they apply daily to their coverage of everything the Bush administration does.

Unfortunately, I just don't think that's going to happen any time soon.